Pioneers of Advanced Handmade Mediterranean Gourd Lamps

One thing leads to another they say and that's exactly what has happened when a gentleman from the US bought a lamp from our Amazon store as a gift for his wife. I wrote about my experience with him (Sorry I never mention names as a respect for privacy) a couple of weeks ago. After a short while, his brother-in-law got in touch with me, looking for a custom order gourd lamp. I was very happy to see that one nice job we completed led more business come in but I never thought t

Greetings from sunny, happy Alanya, one of the most charming towns in the East Mediterranean. Alanya is an inspiration itself, the Mediterranean is an inspiration itself, the nomadic culture is an inspiration itself and add the biggest inspiration, LIFE itself on top of all these, I just can't stop thinking how lucky I am to be existing on this part of the world. Every now and then, I will be hosting someone in my workshop who wants to learn gourd craft. What we show to these

Sometimes, no matter how busy it is, I take my time to give a break for several reasons. But before anything, these little breaks are the sake of my craft quality. Thankfully and thanks to yourselves, Rising Star has made a magnificent start to the year 2018. If we go with this speed of sales for the rest of the year, we will reach last year's figure halfway before the year ends. Thanks a million. And as you can imagine, the workshop is very very busy. As this is a little bre

I tend to believe that 2018 will be a great year, a year which I will remember for the rest of my life and again I believe in a very very good way. Businesswise, it has been a great start but creativity-wise it has been even better. I and my colleagues at Rising Star decided on a few objectives in January which we believed that would take Rising Star further in gourd craft. As I write these sentences by mid-March, I believe we will be able to achieve these objectives. Having

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.

January is a great month for Rising Star Workshop. There is no rush, no hurry to make lamps and ship them and plenty of time to sit back and think... and work comfortably. January is a month which I review.. almost everything. I judge the performance of my lamps by looking at two parameters. The feedback I receive and sales figures. Each design is precious to the crafter and sometimes my own intuition doesn't help me see areas of improvement and opportunities to get better. T

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