Jewellery between function and artistic whim

Burcu worked with pioneering Turkish jewellery masters before starting her own career
After receiving a Fulbright scholarship, she studied metal work at an American university
Her work is a play between functional design and the arbitrary aesthetic of pure art

For Burcu Büyükünal, becoming a jewellery artisan was the only foreseeable path. “I remember making small ships out of pine bark, and a clay pot out of mud at the age of five or six,” she recounts. Burcu initially studied industrial product design, later finding her true calling working in the workshop of Ela Cindoruk and Nazan Pak, two of Türkiye's pioneering contemporary jewellery makers. After receiving a Fulbright scholarship, Burcu honed her skills with an MFA in Metal at the State University of New York. She returned to Türkiye and co-founded the Maden Contemporary Jewellery Studio in 2011. By 2023, Burcu had opened her own studio, as a place to teach and create her work. “I love making my work in my small, isolated bubble. I love that productive and fruitful loneliness,” she explains. Her creations teeter on the boundary between a designed functional product and an arbitrary piece of artistic whim that can’t be classified.

Burcu Büyükünal is a master artisan: she began her career in 2011 and she started teaching in 2015

Discover her work

Discover her work

Burcu brooch

Filigree earrings

Let It Brooch

Origami rings

Leaves rings

INTERVIEW

While I was taking a basic metal course as an elective at the industrial design department, I realised that I love using my hands and making things. I also took ceramics and glass making courses for the same reason. In those years, I received an award in a jewellery design competition. I felt so close to metal and jewellery that I decided to work in this field.

Making a piece completely by myself, contrary to the industrial design process, was a big reason to choose this field. I enjoyed metal and the idea of making objects to carry on the body. After seeing other materials, I realised they had some unwanted surprises during the making process! It was fun but I felt they would be harder to control compared to metal.

I cooperate with local studios to finish my work. The casting studio, the furnace where I melt my silver, the plating studio and other are all situated in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Since the 15th century, this bazaar has been a centre for the commerce of valuable goods such as textiles, jewellery, leather goods, houseware and more. I go to the Grand Bazaar for casting, plating or melting once a week. So, the Grand Bazaar and Istanbul are part of my production process.

Repetitive decoration is a natural component of art in Anatolia and in Islamic ornamentation. I am never inspired directly by these, but I am sure they play a role in my view of aesthetics. Anything can be an inspiration to me, like a box of drinking straws I came across on the back street of the Grand Bazaar, or a sculpture of Dead Abel by Vincent Emile Feugère des Forts at the Orsay Museum in Paris.