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09.23.2024

Highlights from the Menemen Pottery Festival in Turkey

The 3rd International Pottery Festival in Menemen, Turkey celebrated the region’s rich pottery tradition with over 70 participants from 39 countries. Showcasing both traditional techniques and modern interpretations, the festival featured workshops, demonstrations, and competitions, highlighting Menemen's role in preserving and evolving this ancient craft.
By: Yeliz Saydan
September 23, 2024

Festival entrance - photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan

Menemen Municipality proudly hosted its 3rd Annual International Pottery Festival from September 6 to 8 in Menemen, Türkiye. Menemen, part of the İzmir province, has a rich pottery history dating back to ancient civilizations. This year, the festival hosted numerous masters, artists, academics, and cultural professionals, with over 70 participants from 39 countries. Alongside the pottery fair, the event featured exhibitions that explored contemporary interpretations of ceramics, combining traditional techniques with modern design elements to create innovative works. The wide range of exhibited pieces, from figurative to abstract, offered art enthusiasts a rich and diverse experience where art and craft meet the millennia-old tradition of clay...

Mehmet Coşar - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
Eylem Orhan - photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan
Abbas Akbari -photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer

The theme of this year’s annual pottery festival, The Heart of Clay is Menemen, is built on the significant achievements of the past two years. Known for its distinctive red clay, Menemen has long been a place for skilled artisans who use traditional techniques like hand-throwing and painting with natural pigments resulting in intricate designs inspired by local culture and nature.

Workshop Experience with Children - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
Workshop Experience with Adults - photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan

Menemen pottery encompasses both functional and decorative items, including pots, jars, jugs, vases, bowls, tiles, flower pots, tandoors, casseroles, ashtrays, garden decorations, and more. This craftsmanship reflects the region's deep cultural heritage, which remains an important part of Menemen's identity today. While honoring its historical roots, the pottery industry has adapted to modern times. Traditional seventh-generation wheels have been replaced by electric motors, and the area now features eight large workshops.

Raku firing with Vefa Irdelp - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer

Over the course of the three-day festival, ceramists and masters conducted workshops showcasing a range of techniques. These included a raku firing demonstration by Turkish ceramic artist Tevfik Türedi Karagözoğlu, and luster firings by notable ceramic masters Abbas Akbari from Iran, Stratos Karakitsos from Greece, and Turkish luster artist Emir Taşdemir.

On the first evening, a large pottery firing demonstration was led by internationally renowned pottery master Ahmet Tashomcu from Menemen and Russian pottery artist Zinaida Korchagina. The three-day festival also included presentations, musical performances, and a ceremony where Menemen Mayor Aydın Pehlivan presented plaques and gifts to the contest winners, who had come from both domestic and international locations to participate in the event’s competitions.

The festival featured a contemporary art contest, curated by Ebru Ilbeyci, titled “Hemhal” (meaning "engaged"), with first place awarded to Semiha Atabey for her piece Cycle. In addition to this competition, there were several other contests across various categories, including Masters of Aesthetics, Masters of Aesthetics Jury Special, Masters Technical Branch, and Amateur Aesthetics.

Raku firing view by ceramic artist and academic Kadir Ertürk - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
Pottery Competition - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
Maged Zaky Hassan - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
First place: Cycle, Semiha Atabey - photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan

Lustre firing results by Emir Tasdemir - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan

As part of the International Menemen Pottery Festival, the panel titled Menemen Pottery from the Logbook of History took place on September 6, 2024, at the Menemen Cultural Center. Moderated by Argun Yüksel of Topsan A.Ş., the panel featured distinguished speakers, including Prof. Dr. Ersin Doğer, Assoc. Prof. Füsun Çövenoğlu, ceramic artist Mehmet Tüzüm Kızılcan, pottery artist Ulieana Trandafilova Tekin, and Menemen master Orkun Küpçü, who shared their insights and experiences with the audience.

Menemen welcomes the world, and the world competes in Menemen. - Sinan Kerim, festival coordinator.

Anatolia’s ancient pottery tradition continues to thrive and evolve in both large and small workshops across cities such as Avanos, Bilecik, Çanakkale, Diyarbakır, Eskişehir, Iznik, Konya, Kütahya, Manisa, and Menemen.

Raku firing view - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer

photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
Şennur Bağcı - photo courtesy: Yeliz Saydan

A general view from the festival - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer
During the workshop of by Iranian ceramic master Abbas Akbari, Greek master Stratos Karakitsos and a Turkish luster artist Emir Taşdemir - photo courtesy: Ece Basak Bicer


CONTRIBUTORS

YELIZ SAYDAN

Yeliz Saydan is the Community Outreach and Business Associate at MoCA/NY and a ceramic artist and researcher born in Turkey. She graduated from the Ceramics Department of the Fine Arts Faculty in Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. She has a MA degree in the same discipline. Along with practicing clay art, she is interested in culture-art, media-communication, social and educational projects. She gained experience and involved in several EU projects in Turkey, Germany, Spain and Italy. In particular, she has been conducting research on destinations of ceramic cities. 

YELIZ SAYDAN'S BLOG

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