Reclining on a warm marble navel stone inside a steamy Turkish bathhouse, gazing at the shafts of light streaming in from the star-shape openings in the domed ceiling, you might wonder how to bring the memory back home.
The gift shop at the 500-year-old Zeyrek Cinili Hamam in the Fatih district of Istanbul is selling jewelry that lets you do just that.
The Ottoman-era bathhouse complex, which recently underwent a 13-year restoration that cost $15 million, includes separate bathing areas for men and women, art exhibition spaces, a museum and a small gift shop that sells — among other things — jewelry with direct links to the hamam’s design and archaeological history.
“This is a 16th-century hamam that was commissioned by Hayreddin Barbarossa, the infamous pirate and admiral of the Ottoman Navy,” Anlam De Coster, the hamam’s artistic director, explained recently over cups of robust Turkish coffee. To build it, she said, “he hired Mimar Sinan, the greatest architect of the Ottoman Empire.”
“And it was also obviously a very sound decision to build the hamam here in the Zeyrek neighborhood,” she said, “because we’re just next door to the Roman Valens Aqueduct, and we are on top of a network of Byzantine cisterns, which also were key in providing water.”
The name Cinili Hamam translates as “tiled bathhouse,” although when the renovation began in 2011, there were “only a few pieces of tiles remaining,” Ms. De Coster said.
“So the material world of the hamam, the relationship between water, fire and earth, all these stories are interconnected,” she said. “So the jewelry collection is not separate from all these stories we’re trying to unfold at the hamam.”
The idea to offer earrings and necklaces grew out of an early exhibition, in which participating artists created jewelry pieces for the shop. “They were inspired by the hamam symbolism, architectural details and different myths to conceive their jewelry pieces,” Ms. De Coster said. “And we decided that the hamam shop should be both a testament to the cultural heritage of Istanbul, but also to contemporary voices, reinterpreting them and opening new possibilities of engaging with younger audiences.”
The Turkish brand Peracas, which sells jewelry and other goods, was invited to do an initial collaboration that nodded to the bathhouse tiles, shapes and symbols, including the Lily Hoop Earrings (5,180 Turkish lira, or $127) in 24-karat gold plating over bronze and accented with blue stones. But there is also a separate collection designed in-house, inspired by the hamam’s architecture and produced in conjunction with artisans working in this city’s storied Grand Bazaar.
“In the bazaar, you also have different schools of thought,” Ms. De Coster said. “And certain artisans would only make high jewelry. Certain artisans would only make jewelry that they think is beautiful, which could be replicas of certain brands. Whereas we wanted something more naïve; we didn’t want them to look like classic jewelry pieces.”
She added, “We were searching for a more contemporary aesthetic, in line with, for example, the ship graffiti that we found in the walls of the underground cistern.”
Alpin Erkanat, the hamam’s merchandising supervisor, “found this master artisan who is an expert of hammered brass, and who can make these really naïve shapes,” Ms. De Coster said. The pieces, by Ilhan Unutmaz, are sterling silver plated with 18-karat gold. A pair of round earrings resembling the bathhouse domes and their oculi, is 6,500 lira; a matching necklace on a silk cord, 5,500 lira.
Another pair of earrings (4,800 lira) is curved like the edge of a pie crust and features dangling white beads. Named for the Strait of Messina in Italy, the shape is “very similar to the path Barbarossa went in the Mediterranean,” Ms. De Coster said.
Other earrings and pendants in ship shapes echo graffiti scratched into the walls of the basement cistern, carved by the men, possibly held in slavery, who worked on the site centuries ago.
“Barbarossa must have used galley slaves in the construction of this hamam,” Ms. De Coster said, “who might have either been imprisoned in the cistern, or maybe the cistern was used as a dormitory. We can’t know yet for sure, and researchers have different opinions. But they say these are mostly European-style galleys.”
The in-house-designed jewelry is available only at the hamam gift shop, or online for shipping within Turkey; the plan is to be able to offer international shipping as of next year. Other items in the shop include bath oils, household ceramics and contemporary Turkish peshtemal towels and clothing from the prominent fashion designer Hussein Chalayan.
“We’re working on making it international,” Ms. De Coster said, “but given the Turkish customs regulations and changing tariffs, it’s a changing landscape.”
Susanne Fowler is a former editor in the London and Paris offices of The New York Times.
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