AN EVALUATION ON A GROUP OF TOBACCO BACKS DATED TO LATE OTTOMAN-EARLY REPUBLIC PERIODS

Abstract

XVII. the production of items for tobacco clothing, which has become widespread in the Ottoman
society since the beginning of the century, has been our traditional art field, and many items such as
nozzles, sticks, mouthpieces, plates, hookahs, barbecues and pouches have been produced with
different materials. These items, which are produced not only with their functional features but also
with aesthetic concerns and have rich ornamental compositions, constitute an important area of our
ethnographic works. With the widespread use of fabrication production, the production of items for
tobacco use has completely disappeared and has been gradually erased from the memory of the
society, as in many of our traditional arts. These items, which are not produced today, can only be
found in a few museums or collections. In our publications and catalog researches, it has been
observed that there is no collective catalog or a comprehensive publication on tobacco pouches,
which are scattered in various museums and private collections in our country, and the number of
publications dealing with tobacco pouches is quite limited. In these publications, tobacco pouches
were either evaluated together with other items belonging to tobacco culture, or they were
considered as a few examples in general studies about pouches. A group of tobacco pouches that we
could identify within the scope of the research showed us that this area is in need of research and
that these ancestral cultural assets, which have been the heritage of centuries and are about to be
forgotten, should be brought back to the memory of the society.In this study, it is aimed to reveal
the place and importance of tobacco pouches, which are an important part of our rich cultural
heritage, in our traditional Turkish arts by ensuring that they are kept alive, documented and passed
on to future generations. It is thought that this study, which we have done on a group of tobacco
pouches that are processed with the fine techniques of the Turkish art of embroidery and have rich
ornamental compositions, will contribute to the preservation of our Turkish cultural history and
cultural heritage.