How can Oya continue to be learned and passed on?
This project started with a question: how can Oya continue to be learned and passed on when fewer people know how to make it or understand the meanings behind it?
Oya is a traditional Turkish craft that has been passed down through generations, often within families and communities. Made through different techniques, its small flowers, shapes, and motifs were not only decorative but could also carry meanings connected to love, longing, hope, anger, and memory. In this way, Oya became a kind of visual language.
As fewer people learn these techniques today, both the craft itself and the meanings behind it are slowly being lost. To understand this knowledge more closely, I travelled to Turkey to learn the craft directly and experience how it is taught through observation, repetition, and making by hand. This helped me understand that Oya is not only about the final object, but also about the process of learning from another person and gradually building up the skill.
From this research, I developed a series of Oya-making kits designed to introduce the craft in a more accessible way. Each kit focuses on a different technique and provides the materials and guidance needed to begin. The prototype I developed is a needle Oya kit, teaching blue violets and small green leaves as an introduction to the technique.
The physical kit is connected to a website through a QR code, where users can follow step-by-step tutorials, discover different Oya techniques, and learn about the meanings and stories behind traditional motifs. The website also supports the idea of learning together by giving people the possibility to explore workshops and other ways of engaging with the craft.
The aim of the project is not to treat Oya as something fixed in the past, but to explore how its techniques and visual language can continue through making, learning, and sharing.
Aleyra Can
Oya is a design-led project focused on keeping the knowledge of the craft active through making, learning and sharing.
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