Studio

Every Müsekkin work comes from a single pair of hands. From the making of a work to the moment it is placed in its box, every stage is completed in this studio.

The artist, Fatma Zehra Çelik, graduated from the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. As a student her focus was the restoration of paintings on canvas; she later turned to the restoration of works on paper, and today, as her profession, she has for many years cared for works made on paper.

Painting, meanwhile, is a practice the artist has kept since childhood. Making art and caring for works — keeping them alive, repairing them — are, for her, two disciplines that nourish one another. For a conservator, a work is not born at the moment it is made, but at the beginning of a care that will last for centuries. The outlook behind Müsekkin comes from here.

This is why a Müsekkin brooch is not an ordinary piece of jewelry. Each one is a small painting — only in a form that can be carried, worn, and allowed into everyday life.

Most of the works, especially the first paintings now being prepared, are made in oil on handmade paper. Many of the brooches carry handmade paper as well; others are painted on ceramic. The use of paper is not merely a technical choice — paper is a material of its own, soft yet resilient as it carries oil paint. A work made upon it lives together with the nature of the paper.

The handmade paper used at Müsekkin is produced by Ahmet Rıdvan, who has worked in this craft for many years.

The studio is in Istanbul. It is Müsekkin's only place of making; there is no other branch or production site. Serious collectors who wish to see the works up close may request an appointment by email.

Every brooch sets out in its own box, together with its certificate. The certificate carries the work's collection, its number, and the date it was completed in the studio; it bears the artist's signature and the studio's seal. The box is made not to be discarded but to accompany the work — should a brooch return to the studio years later, it is expected to arrive in the same box.

— Fatma Zehra Çelik