Pioneers of Advanced Handmade Mediterranean Gourd Lamps

I always underline that Rising Star is a progressive workshop. When I say 'progressive', most of the time, I mention about the designs that you see. But there are other things that most people will not recognize immediately unless they are from the industry or have in-depth knowledge about the materials that we use or what we make. For me, progession has many dimensions to its meaning but we mostly talk about the design side of our craft. February marks another stage in Risin

A cold friday night in the Eastern Mediterranean resort of Alanya might be boring unless you make your own way.

More than a lamp with a lot of purples, A Phenomenal Purple is a bizarre object, a collector's item and unique piece of handcraft.

It was a wonderful, sunny Sunday in Alanya yesterday. So me and my wife decided visit some green and took our gourds with us believing that they would be happy to visit their hometown too. We had a great time together and here is the summary of the day we had together. I am going to keep this blogpost to visuals rather than the words. Have a look at the tooltips to have a better understanding of the story behind the photos. #custommadegourdlamps #gourdlamp #gourddesign #handm

I have a habit of reviewing our collection every January. Go through each gourd lamp design one by one. See how they did the previous year, should I keep them in the collection, should I make revisions or simply re-make and capture them once again. I added a good few new designs to Rising Star Gourd Lamp Collection already. I also decided to remove some of the designs, maybe not permanently but until I re-visit them. For the time being, they have been removed from my Rising S

Yes, we can... and we will. It was a crucial decision we took a year and a half ago. Our region and our country weren't going through the best of the times. Problems in Syria and millions of refugees moving to Turkey. We had serious problems with Russia as we took one of their army planes down for accessing our borders. The Russian president Putin wasn't happy at all. And eventually, Russians were banned to visit Turkey for their holidays which created a 7.0 scale earthquake

My intention in keeping this blog has never been about only and only promoting our gourd lamps and our business. From the very beginning, I wanted to introduce other gourd artists, other local crafts and other things about our culture and our way of living. Yes, we have a lot of arrogant people (like all races do) but most of us are genuine people, simply trying to make a living and look after the family. Exactly like yourselves. After living in several countries for over 20

Our current collection of gourd lamps are a consequence of five years of hard work, commitment and dedication. Born in early 1970s, I can't deny that I was influenced by the hippie movement and any other ideology which supported peace, friendship, tolerance and understanding. At the age of 46, it wouldn't be wrong to say that some of our designs are influenced from those days. Turned into something else today, the Bohemian way of life or the Bohemian style is undeniably one o

I thought it may be a good idea to show you a little bit of where we live and where we work. I believe our environment has a lot of influence on our work as well as our psyche. Our productivity and of course our creativity. Avsallar is a small village right on the Mediterranean coast and in borders of famous Turkish resort, alternatively known as Turkish Riviera, wonderful Alanya. Our village hosts thousands of people during the summer. Comes winter, we are only a bunch of fa

Classic Mediterranean gourd craft involves a lot of drilling and beading work. Most of us start drilling holes on a calabash, pre-designed or spontenous, and than gently hammer beads into these holes. We change the size of the drill holes and the diameter of the beads to create different figures, colors and illumination. Drilling on a calabash can be a hard task. The dried surface is usually slippery. The entire body is curvy and as you go up the neck and head section, the su