Pioneers of Advanced Handmade Mediterranean Gourd Lamps

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

It's getting busier at Rising Star Workshop and I couldn't find time to spare on our blog lately. I know we don't have loads of followers that are not worried about reading new articles but I like the blog and committed to keep it going. On a sleepless Tuesday night in Alanya, I couldn't find a better thing to do but let yourselves hear about us and the new gourd lamp designs we made since the beginning of February. I presume the most important thing is the inclusion of Mete

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

As far as I am concerned, tulips are the only flowers that create one single tulip from a single bulb. Unlike the rest of the flowers which