G
URHAN designer, Gurhan Orhan, is a true renaissance man. His past lives include working as a DJ, a nightclub and restaurant owner and a watch tinkerer, and his endless sense of curiosity and adventure has been a constant throughout his life. Untrained in jewelry fabrication on the day he discovered a sheet of pure gold, Gurhan immediately fell in love with its warmth and sensuality. At that point he embarked on a journey to educate himself on the delicate craft of designing in pure gold, perpetuating and perfecting the legacy of ancient craftsmen.

An avid collector of antiquities, a lover of art and travel, a student of history and culture, Gurhan finds inspiration in his many vigorous pursuits. His joie de vivre drives him to dive deep into the world around him, honing his attention on his interests in order to understand all facets of a people, a culture, a philosophy, a technique. He is a master craftsman, and he trains each of the artisans who work for him in his Istanbul-based workshop to ensure that they revere both the time-honored style of production, and the uncompromising quality that Gurhan demands be representative of his brand.  

Endlessly fascinated by nature, Gurhan is not beholden to commercially accepted standards of perfection and beauty, often selecting the gemstones and diamonds with which he works for the beauty he sees in their imperfections, and the mystical properties that they transmit. His designs for his bold, one-of-a-kind pieces are often dictated by the gemstones he’s carefully selected, and they can often feature artifacts pulled from her personal assemblage that he’s collected throughout a lifetime of world-travel. 

Gurhan uses only pure, 24k gold, sometimes accented with pure silver, in his extensive collections. The process of working with pure gold is painstaking and labor-intensive. It requires over 1,000 hammer strokes per square inch to transform gold’s malleability into the permanence required for heirloom-quality jewelry, and Gurhan delights in seeing each piece come to life under every stroke of the hammer. The time and attention spent on all of the pieces in the brand’s collections is immediately evident to the naked eye, and is tangible in the experience of wearing his work. “No matter how simple a final piece, the same love, labor and attention to detail goes into creating it,” Gurhan explains. “A piece does not need to be bold or glamorous to shine in its own way.”