Glassware in Turkey

Introduction to glass

Glass is an important part of the modern environment. Its use is widespread, whether for a simple drinking glass or for sophisticated technical equipment. Indeed, the use of glass encompasses such an important part of our life that we notice it little more than any natural part of our environment. But, in fact, glass is anything but natural, quite the opposite, it is a totally artificial material.

Glass is hard and rigid to the touch. It is brittle, tending to break in sudden contact with a hard surface, and yet it is described as a liquid in chemical terms. So, curiously, many of the vessels designed to hold liquids are actually a form of liquid themselves. Glass, when cooled to rigidity bears these basic qualities, but when heated, its qualities tend to change entirely. It begins to soften until ductile, and if heated sufficiently it will flow like water.

Early Glassware

It is widely believed that glass was discovered accidentally. The most frequently quoted account of its discovery is that of Pliny, the Greek historian, according to who some merchants encamped on a river bank after coming ashore from their vessel. They lit a fire in the riverbed, and the following day they found pieces of transparent, shining glass among the ashes of the previous day’ s fire. In its early stages the art of glass was more advanced in Egypt and Mesopotamia, where it is thought that wood-fueled glass furnaces existed.

Turkish Glass making

The traditional art of glassware in Turkey can be seen as two areas of study, the glassware of the Seljuk and the Ottoman periods.

We know of the existance of some, if not many, glass artefacts of the Seljuk period in Anatolia, dating from an era when the Seljuk Turks were newly migrated from the east and on the peninnsula. Some pieces of the Seljuk and Artukid period are now in museum collections. These are mainly fragments from architectural decoration, or architectural artefacts.

During the Ottoman period, the art of glass making was consideraly advanced, as we may see from the surviving products of that period. The glass industry took particularly great strides after the conquest of İstanbul, in that city. The guild system of the Ottoman era was particularly well organised, each craft and profession having its own system which dealt with all matters related to that craft, from the supply of raw materials to the processing of those materials, the form of the finished article and the conditions of its sale. The system was laid down in a number of detailed rules which both imposed a rigid discipline upon the trade and upon the craft itself.

The traditional glass industry produced some of its finest ware during the 17-18th centuries, and yet very little documentary material has survived from that period. We know that a glass-making center existed at Eğrikapı in İstanbul, which was situated between the Tekfur Sarayı and Eğrikapı. A miniature in the Surname of Murat III. does furnish some important contemporary documentation. It illustrates the procession of the glassmakers, and is quite important as it shows a working atelier mounted on a float, with glass workers engaged in their trade, shaping vessels around a burning furnace. If we look closely at the basic tools used in this portable workshop, which was specially constructed for the march past of the guilds on a special occasion during the reign of Murat III., we will see that contemporary workshops using traditional techniques also employ basically similar tools, which emphasises the similarity between such workshops over the ages.

As far as we know, from the avaliable evidence, the Ottoman glass industry seems to have been centered around İstanbul. The sources reveal the existance of glass workshops in and around the capital at Eğrikapı, Eyüp, Balat, Ayvansaray, Bakırköy, Beykoz, Paşabahçe, Çubuklu and İncirköy, producing a great variety of glassware.

Apart from glassware produced locally in such glass-making centers, glass was also imported from abroad, Venice in particular, which had become a major glass-exporting center at the 13th century, catering for the tastes of a variety of different markets. A Turkish trading house existed in Venice at that time. The import of glass especially produced for the Turkish market in Venice was prohibited by the Sultan in 1716, although glass was imported from another center from 1700 onwards-Bohemia.

It is also known that glass craftsmen were imported from France during the reign of Mahmut I, and that a Mevlevi Dervish by the name of Mehmet Dede was sent to Italy during the reign of Selim III to learn certain glass-making techniques. It is said that the Mevlevi craftsman in question founded an atelier in Beykoz, İstanbul, and that among the more popular and succes of the products of this workshop was; Çeşmibülbül ware, a form of filigree ware. In 1899 a workshop was found on the site of the present Turkish glass factory Paşabahçe by a Levantine Jew named Saul Modiano producing ware marked as “Fabbrica Vetrami di D. Modiano, Constantinople”, which by 1902 was employing a work force of 500.

With the foundation of the Republic, the Turkish glass industry was given a new lease of life, and the first national factory was founded on the slopes of the Bosphorus at Paşabahçe, not far from the site of other glass ateliers on 17 February 1934, on the approval of a parliamentary commission. This first factory, founded as the “Türkiye Şişe ve Cam Fabrikaları A. Ş”. by İş Bankası was followed by a number of other corporations manufacturing glass of various kinds.

The Paşabahçe Glass Company especially in its foundation years gathered many glass craftsmen from all parts of the empire to what became an important glass making center for the history of Turkish glass. One of the master glass workers of this era, (father) Yusuf Görmüt, is particularly noted for his free-formed pieces.

Turkish traditional glassware is Çeşmibülbül in particular or Turkish filigree in “facon de Venice”, also called Beykoz ware. Similar ware is still in production at Murano in Venice, where filigree work of high quality is produced. Apart from traditional filigree work Çeşmibülbül, Turkish glassware appears mainly to have favoured forms and styles suitable for applied and brushwork decoration, with a particular emphasise on forms inherited from the art of ceramics.

Turkish Glass Artists

“Çeşmibülbül”, Turkish filigree work

This is the name given to Turkish filigree. Other kinds of filigree are known in glass centers throughout the world. It is a feature of Anatolian workshops as well as those further afield. It is a technique that even the technological advances of modern glass can not surpass the finest filigree craftmanship of the past.


Çeşmibülbül Çeşmibülbül is a highly skilled technique. Each stage of the formation of the vessel is carried out in strict sequence, and must be completed in a very short time. The technique may not differ, but each craftman’ s approach to it will be different (style). There is also no room for error with this technique. Once an error has been made, it is almost impossible to correct it, so all the technical rules of glassmaking must be carried out to the letter with great precision.

The technique is as follows:

1. An iron rod is plunged into the glass metal
2. The rod is turned to gather the glass
3. The glass is removed from the crucible and shaped and cooled outside the furnace.
4. The gather, now slightly cooled is dipped into a mould prepared with coloured glass rods arranged amound it is blown into a bulb over the rods and the fuses to them while still hot.
5. The form is returned to the crucible to case the rods completely in glass.
6. The vessel is given a last shaping in the mould, during which the required twist is given to the filigree by hand turning- a detail requiring considerable skill.
7. The finished form is cooled and sewered from the rod.

Glass Bead Making


Bead Making Glass bead making is one of the most curious forms of glass working. Widespread throughout as a folk artefact, glass beads are made in small earthern kilns. The glass is rendered down in wood fire, and the beads are skillfully shaped with a number of simple impliments by hand, into a variety of forms.

The methods used in the making of glass beads, the heating of the kiln with wood and even the properties of the glass-former itself are the remnants of an art over 3000 years old. Even the beads now made, the end product of this process differ a little from their prototypes of an earlier era, and certainly their function is little changed.

“Dove” Bottle

One of the most interesting and most typical of Anatolian glassware products in composite techniques is the dove shaped bottle produced to a high degree of technical skill in Anatolian workshops. It is an important artefact for the art of glass, as so many techniques are rendered with such skill on a single piece.