Dölek clay returns to the kiln in Gümüşhane

The Gümüşhane newspaper Gümüşhane Olay reported on 3 August 2026 on Dölek, a village in north-eastern Turkey whose centuries-old pottery tradition is now carried by two craftswomen, Şengül Saraç and Pembe Bilgili, both 70. Elif Işık Canlı, who worked as an architect for nine years before turning to ceramics five years ago, now works with the same clay, gathered from the mountains around the village and processed with water in her own studio.

She fires in electric kilns and runs glaze and heat-resistance tests, because the traditional güveç cooking pot and contemporary ceramic forms ask different things of the same body. Some pieces crack or lose their shape; the rest, she says, come out of persistence. Her output runs on two tracks: the cooking vessel the village has always made, and contemporary work including a panel showing a mosque and a church side by side. Efforts to save local pottery in Anatolia often collapse into souvenir production; the difference here is that the material itself is being tested again.