How did your interest in design begin?

When I was in my teens, while engine parts were produced for agricultural machinery in the research center ZİMMAM (Agricultural Machinery Research Center), which my father İ.Hakkı Öz, a professor of machinery, built with his own idealistic initiative for the ITU Faculty of Machinery, I often spent time and I would watch the design and production processes with my father in this center. Over time, I personally tried the measuring and lathe stages with the encouragement of the masters from the production processes. I remember the happiness and excitement I felt while experiencing the stages of turning a stainless steel bar into a screw, which enters the lathe from one end.  Watching any production on any counter today gives me the same excitement. I have a deep respect for her background knowledge. This includes hands shaping dough.  How the parts are transformed into three-dimensional form, with what techniques they are produced, what does the lathe look like, or how the welding is done, how the metal sheet is cut with the guillotine, how the thick sheet is transformed into that shape with what physical properties, and my feeling the joy of manual production has developed over time.

How do you determine the material selection in your jewelry designs?

I felt the importance of designing a machine or (a piece of jewelry) first, choosing the material and producing it with knowledge, patience and care according to the design, interfaces such as molds, and moreover, I felt the importance of teamwork that day, and it is very valuable to me today.  Today, I see that each of them serves the same whole, the common pride experienced as the product emerges, and that it is not possible to produce by hand without a design master, and I am equipped with life knowledge.

How is your design process developing?

I like to make designs that have a story rather than being too outlandish, that make room for themselves over the years with their lines, that mature rather than run out. The way to do this is to integrate my lines with universal values. My work should connect with the personality and nature of my customers, and moreover with their way of thinking, and they should feel complete with the products I offer them.

What do you want to convey with your designs?

Most of my designs consist of an interpretation of the Seljuk geometrical order, a pattern that has adorned the world’s surface for over 1000 years, which I have been trying to follow in various geographies, which influenced and spread to different cultures.

There is a language that conveys the universal life order forward with symbols in the decorations of Seljuk buildings. I focus on designs that I can bridge between the basic values of life and today’s needs.

How do you combine craft and design?

Craftsmen are helping to go a few times deeper than the visible face of Turkish culture.  My respect for craftsmanship and my commitment to the importance of handcrafting is very strong… The combination of new generation techniques and these traditions excites me.  I think it would be good if the profession of silversmithing and the experience and knowledge of many years does not fade away, so that young designers and producers can carry these techniques to the next generations without forgetting them. If I could be instrumental in this with the jewelry I made, I would have fulfilled a small task.