PURUTHANA

The Purutoğlu Family

Mahmut Recai Purutoglu was born in Bayburt in 1968.

His childhood and youth were spent in the historic house, locally known as "Puruthana," located in the Veysi Efendi neighborhood. At that time, there were about thirty families in the neighborhood who owned workshops. Clay, fire, and labor were part of daily life in this neighborhood.

Recai Usta began working alongside his father at a young age. He learned this craft by touching clay and kneading soil. He ended his education before finishing middle school because the workshop was his teacher in life. Alongside workshop work, he also engaged in trade and animal husbandry. However, his father's will took precedence over everything else. With that will, he dedicated his entire life to pottery.
His home and workshop were intertwined.

This historic structure, approximately 1,000 square meters in size, with its rooms, kitchen, and pottery workshop in the garden, was not just a production area but a living space. Over the years, pots, jars, tiles, bricks, purhenks, tandirs, and lime were produced here. This diversity continued until the 1990s. However, technology evolved; cheaper and more durable products manufactured in factories began to enter the market. The workshops in the neighborhood closed one by one. Today, the only workshop still operating in Bayburt is Mahmut Recai Purutoglu's workshop, where only tandirs are produced.

Recai Usta believes that his family has been producing pottery in Bayburt since the Seljuk period.

He sees himself as the last representative of a nine-century-old tradition passed down from grandfather to grandson. He explains that his ancestors lived solely from pottery for centuries and had no other source of income. He says his ancestors also worked as ceramicists for a time. Unfortunately, no written records of this production have survived to the present day. They were most likely lost during the years of World War I. However, the memory of pottery remains alive.
At different times in his life, he has also worked as a vegetable merchant and engaged in animal husbandry. But he never gave up the tandoor. Because his father, Abdürrezzak Usta, had been clear:
"Whatever job you do, you will help with the pottery and tandoor work."
These words were not just advice, but a legacy. After his father's death, he focused solely on tandoor production.
In the past, production was very diverse.
Pots, jars, tiles, bricks, pipes, planters, churns, stove bricks, chimneys, jugs, samovars, hookah pipes, Albanian pavements, and lime... Under challenging conditions, rocks were broken with a pickaxe, burned in kilns, and lime was obtained. At one time, four thousand tiles or bricks were cast per day. Master Recai witnessed that even in his own time, five hundred tiles were cast.
His grandfather, Recep Usta, also produced ceramics.

Only darbukas were made from ceramics, but this production was discontinued because it was considered incompatible with the understanding of brotherhood. The kilns for lime, pots, and painted goods were even separate. Today, demand is almost exclusively for tandir. Therefore, pottery continues to exist alongside the tandir.

According to Recai Usta, the tandir is the common heritage of humanity.

It does not belong to any one nation. Since the first communities settled down, people have used clay for cooking and heating. The Urartians and the Hittites were familiar with the tandir. Almost all Middle Eastern peoples have been using the tandir for centuries. In Bayburt, pottery, ceramics, and tandir production have been carried out by Turks throughout history.
But for Master Recai, this profession is not just about production.
Making tandirs gives him the opportunity to think and be alone. When he is alone with the earth, he sees creation and destruction in it. For him, art is the reflection of what is inside a person onto matter. And this work can only be done with love.

This love still exists in Puruthana.

A love that touches the earth, holding the past and present together.