Nida was only six years old when she started learning this art from her late father Sitki Olcar.     Photos by Umer Nangiana

By Umer Nangiana


Carrying forward the rich legacy of her father, a Turkish female artist is ably keeping alive the centuries-old art of Turkish ceramics and Kutahya tiles. At the recently concluded Turkish Festival and Bazaar, held at Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) as part of Turkey-Qatar 2015, Nida Olcar, the 34-year-old artist from Kutahya, Turkey gave a live demonstration on how the ceramics and tiles are painted with natural colours.
“These are not chemicals. They are made by solid materials and minerals. And these designs are the same from the old days of the masters of this art, and are reminiscent of its great past,” Nida tells Community in a chat.
Nida was only six years old when she started learning this art from her late father Sitki Olcar, the Unesco world heritage certified artist of ceramics and tile making. Nida now teaches this art to others in order to spread it. “I give workshops and have shops where that work gets sold. All these designs have been created and made by disabled children,” she points to pieces of jewellery.  
Evolving from the traditional, Nida also does water marbling designs on ceramics. When the paint dries up, she says, it does not lose its shape and colour. First the designs are created by the artist on a tile or a piece of ceramic and then they are put in an oven to be baked at a very high temperature. “This piece, there are only two in the world. It is like a boutique and there is only one design,” says Nida, referring to a horse head she said she made in six months.
Normally it takes 10 days for a regular work on a plate to complete. Nida’s work has been placed in museums across Turkey and outside, in London. She has also established her own museum in Kutahya, in the south of Turkey, where she has also exhibited her father’s work.
Sitki Olcar was a famous tile making and ceramics artist. The Japanese regarded him as the “Picasso of ceramic art”.
Born in 1948, Sitki was inspired by the soil of his native land and became passionately bound to tiles. In 1973, he started up his own studio called Osmanlı Cini. He pursued his work in tiling and ceramics without making any concessions from his art.
As well as his identity as a true artist, he has become a popular name in these areas. In his tiling, using ancient patterns and forms, he has taken the traditional work of Iznik and Kutahya and sought new forms and essence.
Since 1980, he focused particularly on Iznik tiles and brought a new dimension and dynamism to Kutahya tile making which was on the verge of extinction. Sitki devoted himself to discovering the secret of the coral red which had been lost for 300 years and took a new approach to the ceramics of Kutahya.
He opened many solo exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad after 1980 and won a large number of fans. At the 5th Crafts Exhibition of the Balkan Countries held in the Greek city of Volos in 1986, Turkey was represented by the works of Sitki Olçar.
Examples of his works are in private collections and museums. The master who re-evaluates the past and the distillations of history from a completely different point of view in his own creative process signs his works which have today won international recognition merely as ‘Sitki’.