In Amasya, which lies along both banks of the Yeşilırmak, handicrafts have never been merely a livelihood. Over the centuries they became a way of training the hand and the temperament, passed from one generation to the next. Today many of these crafts have retreated before mass production. Provincial records note that carpet weaving, samovar making, peştamal weaving, needle lace, woodworking, rope spinning from kırnap fibre and blacksmithing are still practised. Among them is one that carries the city's name, is made only in Amasya, and works relief and pattern into sheets of silver: Erhani silverwork.

Erhani takes its name from Erhan Şimşek, who developed the technique. Done entirely by hand, with no stage left to machines, it is regarded as one of the most laborious jewellery crafts in Türkiye and one practised by very few people. The technique itself is new, but the metal it works is no stranger to this region. For centuries silver was mined in the mountains of the sanjak of Amasya, silver akçes were struck in the city's mints, and jewellers worked in its bazaar. The story of Erhani is therefore the story of an old metal taking a new shape in new hands.

Silver in Anatolia

Silver has long been known in Turkish culture as a precious metal, used as money, as jewellery and for household goods. The brightest of metals, it is soft and therefore easy to work by hand. The popular name "moonstone" (ay taşı) refers to this brightness. Because its resistance to germs has been known since early times, people afraid of poisoning drank water from silver vessels, believing that water kept in them was purified. Mirrors, too, are backed with a silver coating behind the glass. Official introductory texts also list the folk beliefs attached to silver: it was thought to ward off the evil eye and misfortune, keep illness away and increase fertility, and it stood for wealth, power, nobility and the spoils of war.

Anatolian silverwork is not a single technique. Telkâri (filigree), kazaziye, savat, ravak, inlay, openwork, kalem atma (engraving), akıtma, mıhlama and hasır (woven wire) have all developed in this geography. In the eastern Black Sea region, in Trabzon, Ordu and Rize, kazaz silver, meaning wire and sheet work such as bracelets and prayer beads, is the best known. Mardin is known for filigree. Amasya's share is the Erhani technique. Although it draws on the accumulated knowledge of Anatolia and of Turkish metalwork, it did not emerge as the continuation of a ready-made tradition but from the experiments of one craftsman.

Silver Mines and Mints in the Amasya Region

Amasya's link with silver caught the attention of the old geography books as well. As Hüsameddin relates, the Ottoman geographer Sipâhîzâde Mehmed Efendi, in his Takvîmü'l-Buldân, describes the city with its walls, citadel, gardens, great river and water wheels, notes that it was called "Medînetü'l-Hükemâ" (the City of Sages), and adds that "there is a silver mine in it". Hüsameddin points out that this description agrees with those in older geographical works such as Merâsıdü'l-Ittılâ'. The mine itself lay in the southern half of the district known today as Gümüşhacıköy. Hüsameddin writes that the hills and slopes against which the town of Gümüş rested, on the eastern skirts of Mount İnegöl and about two kilometres south of Hacıköy, held silver ore "in abundance", and that the town very probably took its name (gümüş means silver) from it. According to him the name has appeared in the records since the hijri year 575 (1179-80) and was not given later. Some scholars referred to the town as "Kûmüs", an Arabicised form of the Turkish name, and as "Fızza", its meaning in Arabic.

The silver drawn from the mine was also turned into money. Hüsameddin records that the Seljuk sultan Kılıç Arslan, a contemporary of Muînüddin Süleyman Pervâne, had a mint both in Amasya and in this town, then known as "Gümüş Pazarı", that coins struck at Gümüş Pazarı have been found, and that the town's Darphane (Mint) quarter takes its name from that period. The mint in Amasya was still working under Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa, who ruled the city as an independent emirate. When the Paşa had the citadel repaired in 764 (1362-63), he had the mint renewed as well. Hüsameddin accepts that Şadgeldi had a mint in which coins were struck, but states plainly that no coin of his or of his son has been found.

After the years in which Timur overran Anatolia, gold and silver became hard to come by. In Hüsameddin's account Timur had seized, on one pretext or another, the money in everyone's hands, and money had become the Amasya government's greatest worry. In this troubled period the mint left by Şadgeldi Paşa was run by Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi, son of Ahi İlyas, a man of Maghribi origin, and silver akçes were being struck there. For this reason Mahmud Çelebi became known among the people as "Ahi Darbhâneci" (the Mint Master). In 811 (1408-09) he became superintendent of the mint newly built in the Pervâne Bey quarter and put the financial affairs of Sultan Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) in order. Appointed to the post a second time in 824, he held it until his death. In the same years a paper currency called "çav" or "çavik" is said to have been circulated in place of gold and silver akçes. The Darbhâneci Lodge that Mahmud Çelebi founded in the Pervâne Bey quarter was completed in 836 (1432-33). Elsewhere in Hüsameddin the lodge is said to have been built by the mint superintendent Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi. Şemseddin Ahmed was Mahmud Çelebi's son and, like his father, also served as mint superintendent. The difference between the two records may come from the lodge having been begun by the father and finished in the son's time, but this is an interpretation. The lodge was wholly destroyed in the great fire of 1273 (1856-57), and its site passed into private ownership.

In the Ottoman period the Gümüş mine and the Amasya mint were among the posts most often held by the city's notables. Hüsameddin's biographical volumes include a great many Amasya men bearing the title "superintendent of the Gümüş mine". The best known of them is Artukoğlu Mehmed Çelebi. While a sipahi he became Overseer of the Gümüş Mine and voyvoda of the district in 886 (1481-82), held the office for some twenty years because he ran it well, and was called "Hacı Nazır". In 905 (1499-1500) he became superintendent of the Amasya Mint and joined the close circle of Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed). After the prince's death he returned to the overseership of the mine and died there in 919 (1513). The settlement that grew around the mosque, school and fountains he built was first called "Hacı Nazır Köyü" and later, in short, "Hacıköyü". The two halves of the present district name, Gümüş and Hacıköy, are thus both tied to the history of the same mine. The mine's revenue kept its importance in later centuries: the Gümüş mine was granted to Köprülü Mehmed Paşa as an arpalık (a supplementary revenue grant), and the Paşa built a caravanserai, a bedesten, a mosque and a bath in Hacıköy, endowing them in 1071 (1660-61). As for the Amasya mint, Balaban Bey, a slave of Şehzade Mustafa (Prince Mustafa), is recorded as having become its superintendent in 961 (1553-54) and as having remained in the post for a long time.

Jewellers of Old Amasya

Alongside the mine and the mint, there were also craftsmen in the city's bazaar who worked silver. Describing Hâtemî İbrâhim Çelebi, a scholar of the reign of Bayezid II, Hüsameddin records that he was the son of a jeweller known in Amasya as "Yüzükçü Abdullah Çelebi" (Abdullah Çelebi the Ring Maker). This short note shows that in fifteenth-century Amasya a craftsman who made rings was well enough known for his trade to pass into his son's byname.

More detailed information on the bazaar of the late Ottoman period is found in the memory book of Amasya published in 1966 by Kapriel Simonian, which gathers the recollections of the city's Armenians. According to a study based on this book, there were six jewellery workshops belonging to Armenians in the city. The jeweller Yeghia Oundjian was known for crafting delicate ornaments and betrothal rings of gold and silver. Hovhannes Yeremian was known for his skill in engraving gold, silver and aluminium. In the saddlers' shops of the bazaar, silver horse tack was made alongside Circassian-style saddles, and masters such as Mardiros and Hovhannes Adzigian decorated saddles and carriages with silver trimmings called "savatlı". The bazaar's four money changers, too, dealt more in jewellery, accessories and antiques than in currency. How the work of this generation of craftsmen reached the present, or whether it did at all, cannot be traced in the sources at hand. No direct link is known between the founder of Erhani and this old bazaar tradition either, and with the information available no continuity can be established between the two. The route of the raw material has changed as well. In a region that once took its metal from its own mountains, the silver sheets used in Erhani workshops are now brought from Istanbul.

Erhan Şimşek and the Origins of the Technique

Erhan Şimşek, the founder of Erhani silverwork, had received no formal training in the art. He began working with silver as a hobby. The researchers who have studied the technique describe it as a method Şimşek worked on for years in his retirement, inspired by various handicrafts. According to the account given, the main reason he set out on this path was his interest in Anatolian culture. In the years when his work took him to provinces such as Eskişehir and İzmir, he engaged with local crafts, made miniature sculptures and worked in ceramics and wood. He came to silver through a friend. Traces of the various handicrafts he had worked at for years later entered the technique he devised. Şimşek worked silver by a method of his own, outside the known techniques, and that method came to be called Erhani after him. The sources at hand do not state from which profession Şimşek retired or in which years he developed the technique.

The technique gained an institutional footing in the city when it was recognised as an alternative method in artistic jewellery. The governorate invited Erhan Şimşek to Amasya for a project. The general aim of this initiative, known as the Erhani Silverwork Training Centre project (EGİEM), was to help women enter working life. Within the same framework, from 2006 onward the Şehit Mehmet Gök Public Education Centre in Amasya opened and has continued to run Erhani courses under its jewellery technology branch. At a time when industry and technology had pushed traditional handicrafts toward extinction, these courses became the principal place where the technique could be handed on to new generations.

An early account of how the courses ran dates from 2014. According to an agency report published in February 2014, fifteen housewives had joined an Erhani silverwork course opened the previous September by the Amasya Public Education Centre and Evening Art School, and the trainees had begun to earn money by selling the silver pieces they made. The course's master instructor, Seher Yılmaz, explained that with this technique the women produced pieces "not made in series, not cast", wholly by hand without any machine, and said that besides necklaces, earrings, bracelets, buttons, belts and brooches the trainees could work frames, candlesticks, mirrors, ornaments and even pictures. The course was due to end on 22 March of that year. The report shows that from its early years the craft was seen as a profession for women and a way of contributing to the household budget. Seher Yılmaz's name does not appear in the master and apprentice chain given in the study published in 2024, which suggests that more than one instructor taught the courses at different times.

Characteristics of the Technique

Erhani is a form of decoration made by drawing and embossing on sheets drawn from melted silver. It requires few tools or machines. The work depends from start to finish on the craftsperson's research, knowledge and manual skill. Precious and semi-precious stones are added to enrich the piece further. What sets the technique apart in this city is that it can carry other endangered arts over into silver. Many historical works from calligraphy, illumination, ornament, miniature painting, tile art, marbling and the tughra can be adapted to silver without loss of aesthetic quality. The official text introducing the technique asserts that no branch other than Erhani can transfer these arts to silver. This claim comes from a promotional text and has not been independently verified. The same text also states that six distinct inventions belong to the Erhani technique, but does not list what they are.

Another distinguishing feature of the craft is that both faces of a piece are worked. The back of the silver is patterned as carefully as the front. Even in a simple piece, a motif is always drawn on the reverse. This is regarded as a sign that the work is handmade and original. Erhani jewellery is not limited to necklaces, earrings, bracelets, buttons, belts and brooches. Frames, candlesticks, mirrors, ornaments and pictures are also made. The most difficult of these are the silver panels intended for home decoration. Because panels are expensive, they sell less often than other products.

Products for women include earrings, hair clasps, rings, necklaces, bracelets, anklets and badges. For men, prayer beads, cufflinks and lapel pins are made. Erhani has also entered the jewellery trade, where it has attracted interest as an alternative technique that can be arranged in traditional or modern form and suits personalised designs. Learners are not content with filling a ready-made mould. Because students are also taught jewellery making, they can develop their own designs in stone setting, soldering and cast silver. To make settings for cabochon and strand stones they must also learn to solder. For this reason the scope of the Erhani course is wider than that of the other handicraft branches, which teach only a particular method of decoration. The student's imagination and manual skill are reflected directly in the silver she works.

The Stages Silver Passes Through

The silver used in Erhani work is pure thousand-fineness silver. The melted metal is drawn into sheets whose thickness is specified in microns. The sheet used for the back is 30 microns, and the sheet used for the front is usually 8 microns thick. These values can vary with the piece. The thickness of the wire is also chosen by the maker. According to the accounts of masters and apprentices, the process consists of about nine stages, each built on the one before.

The first task is annealing. The silver is passed through a flame from a small tube at a set distance. The purpose is to burn off the hair oil and chemicals that stick to the surface during drawing and to soften the metal. The silver is then sanded in a single direction with water sandpaper and cleaned. At this point it must already be decided which technique the work will use, for example cliché embossing or free drawing. Embossing is a technique also used on other materials such as foil and copper. Erhani applies it to silver. In the third stage the cliché is embossed, and the pattern on it is transferred to the silver with a boxwood pen and a knife. This leaves a hollow inside the metal. To harden the hollow and keep it from collapsing, a plastic steel adhesive made by mixing resin and catalyst is used. It sets within a day.

Once the hollows have hardened, the mould is embossed again and the pattern becomes distinct in the silver. In the fifth stage the front and back faces are joined. The motif drawn on the back with an acetate pen is fixed with a fixing pen, that is, a felt-tip pen. After the front and back are closed, the piece is treated with sulphur and darkened. Because the patterns are three-dimensional, the raised parts stay silver in colour while the recessed parts darken with sulphur, and the motif stands out. For this reason most of the jewellery produced is supplied darkened. Customers who want plain silver colour receive pieces that have not been darkened, but in Amasya Erhani work darkening is counted as one of the stages of the process.

In the seventh stage the silver is given a kind of bath with water sandpaper. The water prevents the silver from being scratched. During sanding the darkened recesses stay in place and the raised parts shine again. The 925 hallmark is then stamped on the thousand-fineness silver. The ninth and last stage is polishing. The piece is brightened with a polishing cloth and silver polish, and on pieces with stones the stones are set at this stage. Finally the piece is labelled, weighed, priced and barcoded. These stages apply to the cliché mould technique. If another design is being made, the sequence changes as well.

The list of tools given in the study shows how the workshop is equipped. This list rests on the account of a second informant working in the workshop, Samiye Dikmen. A tube is used for annealing, a polishing cloth and silver polish for brightening, scissors for trimming the edges of the closed sheet and a knife for closing it. The pattern is drawn with an acetate pen and the motifs are embossed with a boxwood pen. A hammer is needed to stamp the hallmark, a pair of tongs for soldering, a file to correct leftover pieces and crow-beak pliers to curl handles. The area to be soldered is cleaned with borax. After soldering, silver that has gone matt is dipped in dilute acidic water to restore its colour, and then in plain water so that it can be handled. Sulphur is used for darkening, sandpaper for smoothing, and resin and catalyst for joining the two faces. When the polishing cloth wears out, silver polish is poured onto it and polishing continues.

Motifs and Their Sources

The patterns used in Erhani work draw on Amasya's long-established traditions of illumination, miniature painting and calligraphy. Among the motifs particular to the craft are the tree of life (yaşam çiçeği), relief, cliché, rose and tulip. Carnation and nightingale motifs also appear among the floral designs. For the pattern on the back of the silver, illumination, tile art and calligraphy are drawn on, while special clichés are used on the front. The clichés are commissioned in Ankara and Istanbul and are made by resizing examples from illumination books for Erhani work. The metal used in the moulds is a mixture of steel and brass. There is no limit to the number of motifs, since new moulds can be commissioned and even imitation jewellery can serve as a source of design. Today the motifs are interpreted in simpler, more modern forms.

In this way a fine line on paper passes to the embossed surface of the sheet, and a line drawn by the calligrapher's pen is worked into the silver with the jeweller's boxwood pen. Because the motif can be changed to suit the customer, two pieces from the same hand may not resemble each other. One promotional text describes this workmanship as done with great patience, line by line, as if with the excitement of an ornamental artist living in the sixteenth century. The comparison may seem overstated, yet it points correctly to the source of the motifs: Erhani's repertoire of designs comes from the books of classical Ottoman ornament.

The Master and Apprentice Relationship

Erhani is kept alive today through the master and apprentice relationship. The chain of transmission is given as follows in the 2024 study by Kuşdemir and Hakan: Erhan Şimşek came to Amasya through the governorate's project and trained Neslihan Sivri, and Neslihan Sivri in turn trained Emel Köse. Emel Köse now passes on to her students what she learned from her teacher. Köse, the study's main informant, was 39 years old and a university graduate at the time of the interview. A computer teacher by profession, Köse began Erhani training at the Public Education Centre at her teacher's insistence after teaching computer courses. She worked beside her teacher for six months, then spent a year selling what she made and using the proceeds to buy more raw material. In her own comparison, the work is like cooking. As the hands grow used to it, better pieces come out. Before a student can carry out all the stages in an orderly way and without help from her master, she needs three to four years of training. When Neslihan Sivri left Amasya she told her student that if she carried the work on after her, she would forgive her all her labours.

The craft faces practical difficulties as well. Some materials, such as silver and stones, cannot be found at once in Amasya and are ordered from Istanbul in urgent cases. An order can take three or four days to arrive. A customer who is staying in the city for only a day may not be able to buy in that time, or may not like the size or colour of the stone that arrives. Production also leaves scrap, that is, silver torn or melted because the flame was held too long. When the scrap reaches between 500 and 1000 grams it is sent to Istanbul, where it is melted and drawn again, and returns to Amasya as sheet.

The study notes that Erhani is worked today by a limited number of women. Because jewellery generally appeals to women, women have come to the fore in this field. The same study observes that while forty or fifty people work in other branches, Erhani has five. The main reason for this small number is the high price of the raw material. According to the authors, for the craft to receive the value it deserves it must be known and practised by more people and supported through cooperation with municipalities and universities. The Amasya Municipality's Culture Houses are also named among the pioneering institutions in this field. Considering that fifteen women attended the course in 2014, it appears that the number of those practising the craft regularly fell over ten years. This comparison is an inference drawn from the figures of two separate sources, and there is no record of what the trainees did afterwards.

Sales and Promotion

The jewellery produced by the instructors is displayed and sold at the Public Education Centre's sales outlets. The staff who make the sales explain the features of Erhani silver to the buyer. A note stuck on the gift box states the stone used in the piece, the properties of the stone, the fineness of the silver, the fact that it was worked by hand and which motif was used. Erhani jewellery also appears in the centre's January 2023 catalogue. The products are reported to be received with interest by local and foreign visitors.

Tarnishing is not counted a flaw in this work. On the contrary, it is seen as proof of authenticity. As it is explained in the workshop, genuine silver oxidises and darkens on contact with air and oxygen. A material that never tarnishes is not silver. The darkening done with sulphur in Erhani turns this natural property into part of the technique.

The Dowry Tradition and the Meaning of Silver

It is said that in Amasya silver was a measure of worth, and that silver bracelets, belts and buttons were placed in young women's dowry chests. These items were a keepsake and also a form of security, and they passed from generation to generation. This account is not documented in detail in the sources at hand. That the city's old jewellers made betrothal rings of gold and silver is, however, recorded in recollections of the late Ottoman period. Even so, publications on handicrafts often stress that jewellery and ornament are closely tied to women's labour. That Erhani is carried on today mainly by women continues this link in a new form.

Chronology

1179-80: According to Hüsameddin, the name of the town of Gümüş, known for its silver mines, has appeared in the records since this date (hijri 575).

1362-63: Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa has Amasya Citadel repaired and the mint renewed.

1408-09: Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi becomes superintendent of the Amasya mint newly built in the Pervâne Bey quarter.

1432-33: The lodge in the Pervâne Bey quarter of the mint superintendent known as "Ahi Darbhâneci" is completed.

1481-82: Artukoğlu Mehmed Çelebi becomes Overseer of the Gümüş Mine. He is the "Hacı Nazır" who gave the settlement its name.

1499-1500: Artukoğlu Mehmed Çelebi becomes superintendent of the Amasya Mint.

1553-54: Balaban Bey becomes superintendent of the Amasya mint.

1660-61: Köprülü Mehmed Paşa, to whom the Gümüş mine had been granted as an arpalık, endows the caravanserai, bedesten, mosque and bath he built in Hacıköy.

2006: The Şehit Mehmet Gök Public Education Centre in Amasya opens Erhani silverwork courses under its jewellery technology branch.

2013-14: Fifteen housewives join the Erhani course opened in September at the Amasya Public Education Centre and Evening Art School. The course ends on 22 March 2014.

2023: Erhani jewellery appears in the Public Education Centre's January catalogue.

2024: Kuşdemir and Hakan's article on Erhani silverwork in terms of the master and apprentice relationship is published in Korkut Ata Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

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Online sources