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A New Year glow

By Cornucopia | December 23, 2020


In lockdown, New Year never comes too late, and Valentine's Day is on the horizon. Serap Yurdaer, the famous Alaçatı ceramcist, has produced a beautiful limited-edition ceramic plate-bowl-and-spoon set for Cornucopia readers. The set hand-shaped and food-safe, fired in her charming farmhouse studio with a warming deep reddish slip. A...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

A Visit to the Feriköy Cemetery with Paolo Girardelli

Commentary by Paolo Girardelli

By Monica Fritz | December 21, 2020


I start with a quote from Andrew Finkel's 'Private View' column, in Cornucopia's issue No 42, on the parting of a friend: ‘The city I first met, too, has long since disappeared as the population has doubled and doubled and doubled again. But, of course, Istanbul is a city where...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Reminiscing on an Istanbul winter

By Monica Fritz | December 13, 2020


Everything about this year has been strange, to say the least, including this December weather. In January we usually see a bit of snow in Istanbul, and only three years ago there was a wonderful blizzard, shutting down the city, which in those days was an appreciated oddity. This year...
Posted in Travel, - Monica at large Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Serendipitous Bodrum

By Cornucopia | December 2, 2020


Thanks to Lara Stoby for this link to this mini-portrait on Bodurm, directed by Cenk Baysan with music by Sarper Semiz. Old settlers puts on brave faces against a jangling world of Oriental muzak, gross development, dual-carriage highways and tourist tat. Or is that unfair? But one can understand why...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

A stroll through the pages of The Land of the Anka Bird – the new book from Cornucopia

By Monica Fritz, filmed by Luca Fritz | November 29, 2020


Cornucopia photographer-at-large, Monica Fritz turns the pages of the new book from Cornucopia Books, in which Caroline Eden pays tribute to the pioneering Turkish photographer Ergun Çağatay's hauntingly beautiful images of Central Asia and beyond. Click here to view on youtube.
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

The Anka Bird has landed…

By Cornucopia | November 23, 2020


The new Cornucopia book launched this week The Land of the Anka Bird, a heart-warming selection of photographs of Central Asia and beyond by the much lamented Ergun Çağatay was immediately spotted last week by its author, Caroline Eden, in her favrouite Istanbul shop, Envai in Bebek (which also sells...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Not too late to catch the last spoonful of the Jazz Fest

By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 29, 2020


The online streaming of the İKSV Jazz Festival concerts is due to finish on November 3. You have been warned! The tap is about to run dry, so now is the time to catch up on what you have been missing at online.iksv.org.https://online.iksv.org/caz Selecting a concert at random from the...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Jazz, - Musical Shares, Shopping Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Birds of a feather: a magnificent Ushak ‘bird carpet’, and the first rumblings of deaccession

London Islamic Sales Week 2020

By Cornucopia Connoisseur | October 26, 2020


It's Islamic Sales Week again! And as always there are lovely artefacts waiting to be discovered and snapped up. It is astonishing to see an institution of the LA Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem's standing open its doors, even a chink, to deaccession treasures. Covid no doubt means...
Posted in Islamic Art Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Not only but also…

The İKSV Jazz Festival adds its voice to the Virtual Chorus

By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 11, 2020

No sooner had the 2020 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival got under way in September than the İKSV Jazz Festival popped up – like a most welcome jack-in-the-box (or should that be jazz-in-the-box?) – on October 3.  Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Garanti...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Cannonballs and cadenzas

The 2020 İKSV Music Festival defiantly opens

By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 8, 2020


‘Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”’ It...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic and friends join in an Island serenade

By John Shakespeare Dyson | September 22, 2020


Following my blog on Saturday, the much-anticipated concert on Büyükada – given by an assortment of young string-players from Turkey, the United Kingdom and Germany – duly took place at the San Pacifico Church that same evening, and was streamed online. The orchestra, conducted by Dr James Ross, played works...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

The ‘Monster of Moda’: such a nice boy

Canavar: portrait of an artist in pursuit of the unpleasant

By Paul Benjamin Osterlund with photographs by Monica Fritz | August 22, 2020


The home and studio of the Istanbul-based artist Canavar (Turkish for ‘monster’), whose work above graces the walls of Marmara University building, is tucked away on a backstreet in the heart of Kadıköy’s Hasanpaşa neighbourhood, one of the few areas in the district that has not been gentrified or was...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Postcard from Pergamon: on the road with Don McCullin and Barnaby Rogerson

Monica Fritz, Cornucopia’s photographer-at-large, shares images from her travels in the Troad and beyond last September

By Monica Fritz | August 1, 2020


WAITING FOR THE RIGHT LIGHT… Last September I had the honour of accompanying the famed photographer Sir Don McCullin (pictured at Assos, left) and the author/publisher Barnaby Rogerson (right) on what turned out to be a very fun road trip to the west of Turkey for Cornucopia's issue No 61....
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Adalet Ağaoğlu (1929–2020)

A tribute to one of Turkey’s best-loved novelists

By David Barchard | July 16, 2020


Adalet Ağaoğlu, who died on Tuesday, July 14, at the age of 90, was one of the country’s most accomplished novelists in the last quarter of the 20th century, and very widely read in her own country, though undeservedly ignored elsewhere. Two of her novels, however, were translated into English...
Posted in Literature, Obituaries Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

That’s the spirit – the Sumahan lives again

Our favourite city escape has just reopened. Andrew Finkel is heading straight for his Bosphorus-side Adirondack chair

By Andrew Finkel | July 14, 2020


The very words ‘hospitality industry’ have always struck me as not just an oxymoron but slightly sinister. In my mind’s eye I see dark satanic mills fuming suntan oil or holiday camp animators with surgically enhanced smiles. But of course it is exactly that US$ 35 billion tourism industry in...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

The paper architect

In the first of a series of online exhibition highlights, we remember Nazimî Yaver Yenal (Istanbul Research Institute)

By Rose Shepherd | July 5, 2020


Nazimî Yaver Yenal: Imaginary World of a Paper Architect Istanbul Research Institute The story of Nazimî Yaver Yenal's career as an architect, spanning nearly 50 years, might be seen as one of stellar failure. Born in 1904, he trained at the Imperial School of Fine Arts, where his precocious talents...
Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Mélodies III: Fauré in Isfahan – the later works

John Shakespeare Dyson completes his series of articles on the French ‘chanson’

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 27, 2020


With this, the sixth and final instalment in our series of articles on composers of chansons – French art songs – we conclude our exploration of the songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). In this particular blog we will be examining the songs he wrote later in his life – from...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Bird Island Farm… an inspiring lockdown

How peaceful it is living with 40 animals – much more so than it would be with 40 humans

By Kim Erkan | June 21, 2020


It’s midsummer's day and my daughter, Ceylan, and I have spent two and a half months at Bird Island Farm, the animal sanctuary founded on a hill above the Aegean town of Kuşadası by my grandson Alican’s wife, Chantal Özbaş. It is the kind of place you meet gentle souls...
Posted in Good causes Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Mélodies III: Fauré in Isfahan – the middle period

‘Taste, harmonic sensibility, the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations’

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 11, 2020


With this, the fifth instalment in our series of articles on composers who wrote chansons – French art songs – we continue our exploration of the songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), this time covering his middle period. Previous instalments have focused on the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, Debussy’s earlier and...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna

Sotheby’s is back with a spectacular Bond Street Arts of the Islamic World & India Sale

On Wednesday, June 10, the auction house launches London’s long-delayed spring sales of Islamic and Indian art

By Cornucopia Connoisseur | June 6, 2020


After an auction-starved spring, hats off to Edward Gibbs, Benedict Carter and the Islamic Department at Sotheby’s London for persevering with their postponed sale Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs & Carpets, originally planned for April – and what a handsome sale it is. The sale...
Posted in Islamic Art Tagged almir ibric, feridun zaimoğlu, golmar kempinger-khatibi, kunsthalle wien, olaf metzel, vienna
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