Cappadocia - Valleys and Pottery

Imagination Valley – first stop today was imagination valley where the rocks have been worn away into shapes that resemble various animals, objects and icons - I wasn’t particularly imaginative the only one I could really see was Mother Mary *



Photos @ Kodak

After some exploring it was time for the next item on the agenda

Pottery
The pottery place we were taken to is a family business which has been running for about 200 years – every pottery has it’s own family patterns – the ones here were beautiful and bright in a sort of Ottoman style.

We started our tour in the manufacturing section seeing where the clay was brought in and learning about the different clays. Next we were shown how they make there mass produced plates – still a mostly hand done process – but with guides to make the plates etc uniform

The 3rd stop on our tour was the artists – who hand paint the plates in a variety of designs – it was amazing watching them work on amazingly complex designs free hand.

Next was a demonstration by a master potter and some apple tea – a master potter must be able to throw a pot and make a lid for it that fits exactly – it was amazing watching this happen before my very eyes. The master potter we watched is the youngest in the area apparently and is considered very good husband material.

And the final stop was the show room for some shopping of course. The Owner gave us an automatic 50% discount so bargaining wasn’t really a big thing here. So many different designs to choose from – it was hard to know where to look – there were plates, bowls, cups, vases in all shapes and sizes and decorated in a myriad designs.

I was drawn to the family designs – amazing bright colours in a lace like pattern with tulip flowers breaking across them. One plate particularly caught my eye so I checked out the price – at half price it was 65 lira so I put it down and went to look at some other designs I quite liked – but once again not really in my price range. I wandered back to the original plate for another look – well more a drool really – and I suddenly I had a sales man of my own. He was very lovely even while doing the hard sell – he was chattered way to me while I looked at other designs – and even took me back down to the painting workshop to look at a plate I like down there but that wasn’t on the shop floor – it was a square plate with a white ??? design on it. Thankfully Bridget kept me company through this as it can get rather over whelming having so much friendly sales attention. My salesman – who was one of the family members offered me an additional 5 lira off and my indecision finally crumbled and I bought the plate.

I have to say I find my natural indecision to be a very good bargaining tool in Turkey

My dream plate was about the size of a small table top with a price to go with it at half price it was still around 2000 lira and even if I could have afforded it not sure how the hell I would have got it home.


Photos @ Kodak

Oh yeah also climbed Fairy Chimmey's as well - a skirt really isn't the best atire for this sort of activity - but I managed it ;)



Photos @ Kodak


* in Turkish Christian religion I found it rather interesting that they referred to Mary – Jesus’ Mother as Mother Mary rather than Virgin Mary as they do in Western Catholic religion - gives a very different value to her I think