Elif Yılmaz makes small, quiet things three flights above a used-book shop.
Bloom & Pin began in 2019, on a kitchen table in Ankara, with a pair of tweezers and a paperback copy of Orhan Pamuk. Elif had trained as a ceramicist and was, for reasons she still finds difficult to explain, pressing flowers between the pages of whatever book was nearest. The first brooch was a cornflower, set in a shallow pour of resin, given to her mother.
Seven years later the studio is in Karaköy, on a street that smells like roasting coffee in the morning and like the sea in the evening. The window faces north. The work is still quiet, still small, still made one piece at a time.
How a brooch comes to be.
Petals are pressed for 10–20 days between sheets of handmade Bursa paper, inside books chosen for weight, not content.
Elif draws each piece twice — once at full size, once at thumbnail — before cutting a single thing.
Porcelain or clay, petal by petal. The slowest part of the process, and the part that refuses to be hurried.
Brass pin-backs are forged in a nearby workshop in Karaköy. Every piece is numbered and signed inside the back.
“I think the brooches are small because the flowers are small. Everything else follows from that — the slow work, the editions of six, the resistance to making more.”
Editions of six to fourteen brooches per piece. No restocks.
Everywhere, by tracked and insured mail. Usually within five working days.
Open through September. Typical turnaround, eight weeks.