Durali Usta and Hatice Hanim
Durali Surer who lives in Çerçiler just above Kaş is a wood craftsman and can be found every Friday at the Open Air Market (Pazar).
(Guest article by Ayşe Dağıstanlı)
See the Durali Usta photos on Facebook.
Lost Craftsmanship? Are we losing them?
Nowadays we use wooden spoons mainly in cooking. In the old days, they even used to make tea spoons out of wood. This is what made Durali Surer start his craftsmanship: one day he bought a wooden tea spoon and its handle broke. At that moment he thought he could do a better job himself. Now not only spoons but he makes many diverse objects. He makes knives, bowls, mortar and pestle. He used to make bird cages and he keeps one that he made a long time ago.
Çeçiler house
Durali Bey was born in 1931 in Bezirgan, a small village in the hills behind Kalkan. He definitely doesn’t look his age, he is quite a fit and bright guy. He is married and has four grand daughters from his son and daughter. He and his wife Hatice Hanım moved to Kaş in the 1980’s and presently live in Çerçiler overlooking Kaş.
Flower bouquet
Hatice hanım has difficulty walking, therefore she spends her days sitting next to her husband and makes beautiful needle laces. Her work looks like a bouquet of colorful flowers.
Durali Usta workshop
His workshop is his small balcony in front of his house, hidden behind the shady leaves of his vine, a yasemine tree, a muşmula (medlar) tree and pots of flowers. Durali Bey and his wife keep a bag of birdseed in their balcony for a pair of doves which frequently visit them. The birds bow their heads in thankful grace for the food they get. Many people passing by greet this lovely couple, and they greet them back with a big smile.
Boxwood spoon
He previously worked as a fisherman, a barber and a butcher. Now he works his wood objects and sells them in the Friday pazar in Kaş. He has been interviewed by TV channels and newspapers. He says that people who see his work do not believe that they are hand made.
Durali Bey started his woodwork in 1995, with great determination and will power he learned it all by himself. He makes all his tools himself and gets the cutting edges from scrap parts metal in wood saw shops. He fixes the various metal cutting tools to wooden handles that he makes himself. He has a clamp to hold tight the pieces of wood and a spiral that cuts out the rough excess in the wood. He uses files, sand paper, saws of different sizes and shapes. He wraps the sandpaper around wood sticks to make it easier to use.
The day starts for Durali Bey after breakfast. He comes out to the balcony and works all day only to stop for lunch break. He shapes the wood and gives it another life. He can make about eight tea spoons in a day. Watching him carve out the small spoon that he offered me is so interesting and his skilled hands make it look like an easy thing to do.
Starting to create a spoon
He has many different shape and size cardboard molds or forms. First he chooses the form that he thinks will best fit the piece of wood he plans to work on, or find the form that fits best the object hidden in the piece of wood. He starts by placing the form on the wood and he marks the top and bottom points of the line in the middle and he draws the center line on the wood, then by centering the form, he draws the contours on the wood. Sometimes he draws half of the contour, then turns back the form to use the same side of the form to avoid any asymmetry in the shape.
polishing a wooden spoon
He fixes the wood on the clamp and starts taking the excess out of it. His saw keeps moving back and forth and soon the wood starts to look more the shape of a spoon. He cuts around the form he drew and then he cuts the excess wood in the front and the back of the spoon. To do this he uses his able hands, he doesn’t need a form to draw the sides of the spoon. It seems the saw knows well the curves, the depth of the spoon by heart and doesn’t need to follow the contours of the object hidden in the wood. Soon the cavities and curves of the spoon are hollowed out and you start to see the spoon take shape in front of your eyes.
finished wooden spoon
Once the spoon’s shape is roughly formed, he uses a tool like a screwdriver and he digs and chisels and carves out the bowl. To do that he uses a small coin to mark the lower curve of the bowl. He has, in a small cup, lots of different round shaped objects: pill bottle tops, different coins, and round objects of different sizes. He chisels out inside the edges of the bowl of the spoon. He peels outside of the bowl layer by layer like a potato. He smooths the handle and rounds the edges.
He smooths the surfaces with his spiral and thus all the pieces of wood that don’t belong to the spoon are carved out completely. Surfaces are smoothed with files and sandpaper and the spoon looks lie a perfect spoon now.
boxwood tree
The material: Boxwood is the perfect material for making wood spoons and other objects. Boxwood is one of the hardest trees growing in Turkey. They are slow-growing evergreen shrubs and small trees. Because of its relatively high density, boxwood is often used for chess pieces, spoons, bowls etc. It is flexible, difficult to split, and is resistant to external impacts. It gives very smooth and shiny surfaces. It is not affected by temperature differences, doesn’t rot, doesn’t shrink, nor split. But it grows very, very slowly. For this reason it is one of the trees that are not allowed to be cut. Although it is one of the best woods to make spoons, wood craftsmen like Durali Bey in Turkey use birch wood and holm or holly oak wood as alternatives.
boxwood comb
High quality combs were made out of boxwood, and in Turkish there is a saying: “Kel başa, şimşir tarak”. Literally it translates as “Comb of boxwood for bold heads”. It means unnecessary luxury is being used. Because if you don’t have hair you would not need a high quality comb either!
boxwood pipes
Other uses of boxwood are musical instruments such as: “kaval” (caval) or shepherd’s pipe and clarinets; and chess pieces.
boxwood chess pieces
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