BIOGRAPHY: Internationally acclaimed jewelry designer Gurhan Orhan has made 24-karat gold jewelry his passion since first discovering pure gold at the age of 40. His path to becoming a jeweler was a story of unique, and even unexpected circumstances: Having pursued diverse careers as an electrician, a watch repairman and a discotheque owner, Gurhan encountered the prized metal in his native Turkey and with no formal training behind him, set out to reinvent the way in which 24-karat gold jewelry was created. Acquainting himself with the skills of ancient goldsmiths from 7,000 years ago, Gurhan learned the art of hammering, a technique which improves the durability of gold for wearing, while creating a supremely beautiful texture that would become an aesthetic signature for Gurhan jewelry.
The Gurhan jewelry line won its initial following in Istanbul and Turkey, before capturing the eye of Fiona, an admirer from New York who fell in love with the individuality of each piece, as well as its creator. Her devoted admiration, coupled with Gurhan's passion for his 24-karat gold jewelry led the pair to Manhattan, where they would soon marry and establish the Gurhan line in the United States, with Fiona serving as its president. Still crafted individually by Gurhan and his trained assistants in Istanbul and now New York City, each piece of Gurhan jewelry is a unique, hand-wrought work of art which interweaves contemporary design and the magic of centuries-old craftsmanship: the result is a gift of amazing intimacy and radiant warmth to every woman who wears it.
Inspired by the jewelry of ancient Anatolia and Byzantium, the Gurhan line features the distinctive hammered finish as its signature, enriched by precious stones and other rare treasures. Gurhan has said that he designs "for the woman who wants to wear fine jewelry all the time, in all the lives she lives".
At the beginning of the summer, ViaLuxe had the chance to interview jewelry great Gurhan Orhan at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. We discussed inspiration and previewed this artist’s fabulous new collection. Here is what Mr. Orhan shared with ViaLuxe.
VIALUXE:
Mr. Orhan, your business has grown rather quickly. Can you give me a little background on how you got started in the jewelry business?
GURHAN:
It was approximately 13 to 14 years ago. It was love at first sight. I met the first sheet leaf gold in my life and I start playing with that and I realized the amount of quality, nice feeling, and nice color of it. I was really in love.
VIALUXE:
You have accomplished a lot in your life. What are you most proud of?
GURHAN:
I’m very much proud of my wife because she took a very small not even business, kind of handwork and took that and made it a brand name and nice business now because we are having a big family in Turkey, almost 90 people working in Turkey, 30 people working in New York now it’s a quite big business in short period of time. I’m proud of Fiona.
VIALUXE:
Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?
GURHAN:
Inspiration comes from everywhere, mostly comes from women herself. But the most important thing is not to have inspiration from other jewelry. That’s the number one thing. Buildings can give you inspiration - this carpet - anything you see can give you inspiration. The inspiration is something you swallow you don’t even realize how and it goes to your subconscious. And then you are designing and it comes out. If the inspiration comes from other jewelry - whatever is coming out possibly becomes something that you are seeing around. So, for a long time I didn’t even look at modern jewelry magazine or anything. Until I built up my style and some pinpoints. Now I don’t mind, but inspiration is everywhere.
VIALUXE:
Talk to me about people that were influential in your life.
GURHAN:
Up to maybe my twenties - my older brother was my most influential person in my life. After that I never got any kind of influence from celebrities. But I’m a music lover and I always wanted to be very close to rock music and rock musicians. Many of those people like, Jim Morrison was a great influence in my life.
VIALUXE:
Are there any collections this year that are closer to your heart then others?
GURHAN:
What I liked to do most every season - apart from those standard styles and some classic styles, I also do one collection which comes from the past. Because my technique is coming from the past - for a long time even now, I felt myself as reincarnated person - I believe in reincarnation. What I try to do now, is for example, I collect some pieces from Roman period - bronze pieces and I put them out as jewelry today. I collect some jewelry parts and piece from Victorian period I put them out today again - the recent collection now I made is the Scarabs from Egyptian period. Those are giving me the greatest joy and I can say I mostly proud of those reincarnated jewelry.
VIALUXE:
Are there any other jewelry designers that you currently admire?
GURHAN:
There so many very good designers in the US. Alishan is one of them, he lives in CA, Alishan I appreciate very much - and so forth there are many designers.
VIALUXE:
Back to you designs. I see some jewelry you have designed that is inspired by ancient Rome. Tell me more about these pieces.
GURHAN:
These are the reincarnated jewelry I was describing to you before. These are the bronze piece they are introduced almost four years ago, some pieces from the Roman period and some later on. They are parts from leather clothing mostly and I turn them into jewelry.
Here, we have little bit later period like 1830s, 1850s, the Victorian period. They were also made as jewelry at that time. These are souvenirs of the Grand Tour in that period which was mainly located in Italian and French Riviera. These are made in Italy, micro-mosaics very small tessera - they call it –tesserae, they get together and they build up pictures of flower , or some ruins, some Roman ruins, some bugs here. I love this collection very much this is continuing since 3 years.
This is from last year its lava, lava stone is a very interesting, very strong but also carve able very easy. So they carve this stone in the same period - the Victorian period, 1800s - and they usually created some kind of famous pictures into almost three dimensional carvings, or some famous people like Michelangelo here, like Dante here. This is a famous painting of Leonardo so it’s a kind of nicely color stone. Earth colors all. These are the lava set and this I introduced this year; these are the Scarabs, Egyptian scarabs from that period. It takes, for example, for the Scarabs it’s been more than three and a half years collecting these, this year I put them out as collection - it’s like 60-70 pieces. Here are the opals. Opal is one of my best stones, I love using opals. Fiona is Australian and these are all Australian opals we tour friends and some relations. I made very good connection with Australian opal dealers and I chose my opals first, which means I can have the best part of the yield so these are the opal collection.
VIALUXE:
Thank you for your time and congratulations on another great year.
GURHAN:
Thank you – I have enjoyed it.
- Paul Morillo, Executive Editor, ViaLuxe News