How One Turkish Artist and Interior Designer Is Putting Her Country’s Glassmaking on the Global Map
MILAN — While Venice and Bohemia are often regarded as meccas of traditional glassmaking, it often goes unnoticed that the Turkish art of glassmaking dates back to the 16th century. The art reached its peak during the Ottoman Empire with the rise of imperial landmarks like Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque.
Interior designer Sema Topalo?lu, who has designed homes in Florence and hotels in Istanbul, said Turkey’s glassmaking tradition has allowed her to make fantasy worlds that aren’t possible with wood and concrete.
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“I find glass very joyful,” she said from a glassmaking studio in Istanbul, just a few days before her first U.S. exhibition during Design Miami and Art Basel at the Alcova Miami 2024 exhibit, where her “Non-Conformist Garden” of lush, blooming forms — from grass-like flowers to intricate shapes in vivid colors punctuated with delicate candies and carnivorous plants, is currently abloom. An immersive experience open to the public until Sunday has taken over a space in Miami’s oldest hotel, the River Inn, and has been transformed into an indoor tropical oasis in which vases and plates have been worked into a mirage of glass.
Topalo?lu impressed the design world with her first otherworldly exhibit at the Alcova satellite space in Milan during Design Week last April. She later did the same during Dubai Design Week in October. A new chapter will begin in February when she will showcase an evolved version of her non-conformist tropical garden at the Unique Design x Mexico City exhibition, curated by Morgan Morris.
At the next Milan Design Week in 2025, Topalo?lu plans to expand on this and integrate her furniture design pieces. “I will present my wood furniture. I want to start to use a mix of materials like glass, iron, marble and wood,” she said.
In fact, the boundaries she has transcended with glass, she has also transcended with carpentry, brass and bronze casting and metalwork. Case in point: The lobby of the headquarters of Hürriyet, a major Turkish newspaper, which houses a collection of furnishings and lighting characterized by bended and morphed forms.
Over the years, and through her work as an interior designer, Topalo?lu has built an ecosystem of a close-knit community of master artisans who help make her experimental designs a reality.
The daughter of a collector and painter, she has spent a lifetime admiring the layers of art and culture that surrounded her in her native Turkey.
Looking ahead, Topalo?lu said she is driven by a desire to work globally in regions where design is highly valued. While Istanbul remains her current base, she envisions a dual presence, most likely adding Milan as a second creative hub. A priority going ahead is making inroads into the fashion world, where she hopes to design runway sets and produce collectible work for signature spaces while focusing on multidisciplinary projects that celebrate craftsmanship and the joyful energy of imaginative design. That vision very much involves celebrating Turkish artistry and craft.
“After next year, I want to pass on to another material. Maybe Iznik tile, a very historic tile, cultural tile. I would love to do something for a fashion brand. I would love to design for the catwalk. I’m really interested in fashion,” she said.
Iznik pottery and tiles come from the eponymous city of ?znik, the Ottoman Empire capital in 1331. “I aim to translate my unique aesthetic into functional and practical everyday objects. With the performance I’m hinting at in Miami, we’ll feel this even more clearly in my 2025 presentations,” she said.
Marble, she said, is another material that allows her to freely create the same “illusions” realized with glass. “I love it most in its raw, quarried state, straight from nature. I sometimes appreciate its tamed, slab form, though that’s more of a forced affection. While marble can quickly respond to form through technology — lasers, five-axis robotic machines, or water-jet cutting — there’s something truly special about having a master artisan carve and interpret your designs by hand,” she mused.
Topalo?lu’s Milan Design Week debut wasn’t the first time Turkish glassmaking hit the Milan design scene. In 2018, industrial designer Ron Arad created a set of vases for contemporary Turkish glass brand Nude. While the number of artisan craftsmen is dwindling, Turkey’s glassware industry remains robust and today is composed both of small, independent players as well as large industrial ones. The country is one of the top producers of glass — especially flat glass — on a global scale.
According to Statista, Turkey’s glassmaking industry was seen producing $5.2 billion in revenues in 2023.
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