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A passionate jewelry designer, Meltem Kurtulan has run first at many national and international design competitions. Unique and authentic, her models have always conveyed the Anatolian civilization and spread its culture worldwide. Together with her husband Naci Kurtulan, they make the perfect team behind the success of the Turkish jewellery house KURTULAN. Let us find out more about her in this exclusive Q&A.
You have been designing jewellery for Kurtulan House since many years now. Even the lines are different, we can feel the spirit of the house in every piece. Can you highlight the philosophy of the brand in brief and let us know where you source your inspiration?
Since the first day Kurtulan was founded we tried to treat the gold using the old and conventional methods. Our products not only combine the past and the present times, but also make you feel that they are one hundred percent handmade. And that is the spirit of our company. Even if we have different concepts in our designs they are somehow connected to each other. Anything pleases a human being in an artistic way can inspire me. This sometimes may be a natural beauty, a poem, a part of a historical structure and even a handmade carpet.
The use of gold and silver together is one of Kurtulan’s jewellery main features. Is this technique influenced by your bold designs or is it a style your House wants to be characterized with?
24K gold has a fascinating, warm and effective color that no other gold can have. Old-looking silver – which we produce a lot – makes 24K gold more noticeable and that makes it one of the best metals which can be used with gold. Using them together made me more creative so that I can reach more people. But silver-gold combination is used in only some of our products. We also keep producing our ” 24k only” designs.
The latest line presents art pieces worth for museums, but in the same time fashionable and wearable. Can you describe the profile of Kurtulan woman and to which age category she belongs?
The only-24k gold product only interests a little group of people due to the high price of the gold but the silver and gold together ones interest a whole lot of people not only with the different designs also with the lower prices. In this way we are able to reach people at any age. Actually anyone who likes to buy unique and handmade jewelry can be our customer.
You participate in several international shows around the world and the markets’ responses are of course different. Can you give as some examples describing the divergence in the tastes, or in the contrary the similarity?
USA, Turkey, European countries, China, Australia, New Zeeland, Korea, United Arab Emirates and Turkic Republics are most commonly our customers. We have a lot of different customers with a lot of different tastes. And that’s because our products are unique, people don’t want to buy things which can be found in every store I think that’s why they choose our company. For example in China a Kurtulan chain store is building up. Our collection is wide ranged so that we can do business with different people easily. We try to understand the ”taste of living” of our customers mostly the American and Chinese customers and that makes everything much more easy for us.
What is your main goal for the year ahead?
2013 will be a special year for us. It will be the 20th anniversary of our company, so we will design a special collection. In this collection there will be a lot of one of a kind pieces and specially cut stones. Our vintage Kurtulan Magazine will be printed as the special edition. You will be able to find every tiny detail about Kurtulan Jewelry in it. And also we will try to make our customers much more comfortable as we try to do every year.
Any final word for COLLECTION readers?
Kurtulan is a family company which dedicated itself for unique jewelry for 20 years now. Wouldn’t you want to join our family and be a Kurtulan fan?
