Izmir Ethnographical Museum

And since you’re in the neighborhood of the Izmir Archaeology Museum, perhaps you’d like to see a collection of workshops showing the lost manual ways of saddle and glass making, leather tanning, copper works, carpet weaving and the authentic folkloric artifacts of carpets, traditional costumes and camel bridles. Yes, camel bridles. This will give you a chance to step back and see what, not so long ago, was a way of everyday life in the 1800s in Izmir and Turkey.

The Ethnographical Museum is in an old mansion that has reconstructed rooms from Ottoman home life including everything from a bridal chamber to a circumcision room, plus life sustaining talents of days gone by like: workshops for blue bead glass making (evil eye trinkets) printing,rope making and even a pharmacy.

It’s a fun easy way in a half hour, to learn as the subjects are illustrated with photos, and wax models of the people of the era. It’s very entertaining to step back into the 1800’s and see so many models of extinct or near extinct handicrafts.