Discover the craft behind Istanbul’s booming trade
Turkey has a wealth of experiences on offer for travellers and holiday-makers
IN THE ancient city of Istanbul, which straddles Europe and Asia across the mighty Bosphorus Strait, all eyes have been on the completion of the Marmaray sea tunnel, the first rail tunnel to link two continents. For the first time last month, passengers travelled from east to west by train and the project is due to be completed later this year. Trade links have been at the heart of this strategic stronghold for millennia. Today, this teeming metropolis is still home to the very best of traditional artisanal Turkish design and craftsmanship.
This love of Turkey’s “cultural heritage” inspired the power couple Drs Yalcin and Serpil Ayasli to convert one of three properties neighbouring their Istanbul house – a renovated yali, or waterfront mansion – into elegant guesthouses, in a new enterprise called the Armaggan Bosphorus Suites.
Dating from 1863, the magnificent buildings dazzle in the sunshine, as you arrive by the yalis’ private motoryacht, all fresh white paintwork and shuttered windows outside, hand-painted ceilings and ornate fabrics inside. It is the most prestigious riverside address in the city, looking across the strait from Europe to Asia. For a room with a view, there is little to beat a suite on the waterfront. I counted seven large picture windows in mine – all with their own blinds and swags.
The concept of the guesthouses is to enable visitors to go beyond the norm and get under the skin of Turkey’s artisanal culture, VIP style. Not only might you need to get down to some out-do-hours shopping in its stores, but you might fancy a personalised trunk show of wares within your yali; or you may want to request a special piece of jewellery be made especially for you; or perhaps you need to use their private jet for business or a visit to their upcountry farms and wineries. All are possible in these guesthouses.
The Turkish-born Ayasli’s founded their company Armaggan in 2007. By 2010, the brand was selling its own-label range of handcrafted clothing, jewellery, leather goods, objets d’art and homeware in two seven-storey Istanbul boutiques, in the upmarket Nisantasi shopping district and in Nuruosmaniye near the Grand Bazaar. After successful careers as scientists and entrepreneurs, they now flit between their homes in Boston and their homeland.
I chose to go “backstage” into the Armaggan textile workshop on the Asian side to see a handful of weavers crafting intricate fabrics with gold and silver thread on 100-year-old looms. Overseeing the painstaking work is Professor Dr Ozanay Omur and her son Oygar, who design the womenswear, cushions and rugs. In the same building is their Natural Dye Research and Development Laboratory, which takes 16th century Ottoman textiles, analyses them for their profiles of fabric and natural dyes and reinvents them – producing fabrics that use the same dye process, the same threads and the same weaving techniques. A handful of lace-makers sit under bright lights quietly chatting and stitching delicate patterns as adornments on homeware and clothing that will be dyed in an assortment of natural hues the colours of teatime macaroons.
These handicrafts, often bought as gifts, come at a high price, but they ooze quality, individuality and provenance. Both stores sell simple Armaggan silk scarves for around £100, floaty screen-printed silk summer dresses for £440 and flowing women’s kaftans in silk with needlework for £2,930. As for jewellery, some of it comes in the form of blingy statement pieces (they presented Kate Moss with an improbably bulbous gold ring when she visited a few months ago worth $8,800), but much of it is also subtle and divine.
However, this authentic experience comes with a very real-looking price tag. A night in a suite with a Bosphorus view is an eyewatering €3,500. Suites at the rear of the buildings miss out on this, so it seems even harder to justify their €1,800 price tag. Clearly, the uber-rich are the target market, and the owners are well connected enough to have an address book stuffed with invitees, including for corporate rentals – each of the three yalis can be rented individually or groups can take the whole complex.
Number Six, with four suites, feels the most homely, with its window seats for curling up in with a book while gazing at the river. Each yali has a shared “salon” and kitchen intended for people to come together in “shared discourse and degustation”, so romantic weekenders beware.
As part of staying in a guesthouse, as opposed to a hotel, you’re meant to receive a Personalised Stay form on which to list some preferences – which room scent would you like, which fruit? But your preferred drinks and flowers are charged as extras, which seems very tight. I didn’t get this form, so my room felt rather joyless in its opulence without a minibar to be curious about or electronics to play with. There wasn’t even a bath. I ordered some coffees from the butler, but had to collect my breakfast from the spread downstairs and bring it up while I was working. Still, it is the owners’ first foray into hospitality, and their vision and passion for detail are evident throughout their wider work, so the likelihood is they’ll iron out the creases.
Their sister brand of traditional Turkish foodstuffs, NAR (Natural & Regional) lives up to its name from what I saw of the handmade sweets and cooking methods at the NAR Restaurant. Naturally for a lifestyle brand, its products are showcased all over the yalis along with the owners’ personal collection of art (around 70 paintings), and the floor rugs are either antiques or their desirable contemporary versions, handwoven in towns and villages around Ankara.
Entering yali Number Seven, the owners tell a story about a visit they had from one of the most knowledgeable rug sellers in the Grand Bazaar. He said the rug in the salon’s entrance shouldn’t be lying on the floor because it was 150-years-old. The owner replied that, on the contrary, it should be walked on because footsteps add to its character. Only a rug of absolute quality would be up to the rigours of that task. At Armaggan, you get nothing less.
Armaggan Bosphorus Suites open in January 2014, from €1,800 per double, including breakfast (armaggan.com).