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ANKARA: Anatolia Through The Artifacts Of Everyday Life

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  • ANKARA: Anatolia Through The Artifacts Of Everyday Life

    ANATOLIA THROUGH THE ARTIFACTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

    Hurriyet
    March 2 2009
    Turkey

    ISTANBUL - Collector Orlando Carlo Calumeno is creating a museum
    to display his thousands of postcards, photographs and documents
    dating back to the 1600s and shedding light on the rich history
    of Anatolia. This Museum of the Anatolian Mosaic is opening soon
    in Istanbul

    Orlando Carlo Calumeno has collected 8,000 handwritten postcards;
    2,500 photographs; 2,400 books, some dating back to the 1600s;
    measuring devices; post-office scales; and more than 10,000 historical
    documents and other ephemera, including bills and diplomasÃ'all on
    Anatolian themes.

    Though parts of Calumeno's collection have been exhibited before, the
    Museum of the Anatolian Mosaic he is opening to house them will be the
    first of its kind in Turkey. Telling Hurriyet Daily News & Economic
    Review that the museum would open soon in Istanbul, Calumeno said he
    wanted to display his collection permanently because people in Turkey
    do not know enough about the societies they live in together. "There
    are egoist collectors who want to keep everything for themselves
    [and are] not willing to share," he said. "Opening such a museum is
    extremely important for refreshing the social memory."

    Though his mother is Armenian and his father is Italian, Calumeno's
    family has been living in Turkey for 500 years. The family's interest
    in collecting is as old as its roots here. As a student in elementary
    school, Calumeno started spending his pocket money on what would become
    his collection. The postcards that he randomly bought over the years,
    many bearing Armenian and Greek writing, are priceless today.

    Reflections of history

    Calumeno said the postcards and photographs had great historical
    importance and reflected Anatolia's historical richness. Describing
    a scene in one of them, he said: "On a postcard from Sivas, dated
    1909, we see two young girls playing tennis. In another postcard,
    again dated 1909, there is a high-society feast in Sivas showing
    people with luxury clothes and umbrellas. If there were no footnotes
    on these postcards, you would think that they must have been posted
    from Florence or Paris."

    Calumeno said that interest in collecting postcards in Turkey started
    to grow at the beginning of the 2000s. "It is not possible [now]
    to gather the collection that I gathered when I was a student," he
    said. "These postcards are hard to find in the market and the ones
    left are being sold on the Internet for thousands of dollars."

    Hundreds of his artifacts displayed in exhibitions

    Some of Calumeno's artifacts were displayed in the popular exhibitions
    "Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago," "Sireli Yegpayrıs - My Dear
    Brother," "Yadigar-I Hurriyet" and "Ä°zmir Postcards." The hundreds
    of handwritten postcards shedding light on Anatolian history drew
    attention not only in Turkey, but also in many other countries,
    including Armenia. Calumeno said that the process of reviewing his
    collection while preparing for these exhibitions "made me see that
    every part of the collection completes the other; none of them are
    independent."

    Along with the exhibition last year, Calumeno released a catalogue
    for "Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago" that included a total of
    750 postcards and was published in Turkish, English and German. He
    is now working on a new book that he will publish in the coming
    months, "Greeks in Turkey 100 Years Ago." An exhibition will open
    simultaneously with publication of the book.
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