Spinning

Mum-Kid Toy Making, Sinop 2015

Walnut whirligig is one of the anonymous toys of Anatolia, which has also been a part of people’s childhood memories in Sinop. While Miné was searching for local and traditional wooden toys, she found that people from Sinop remembered how they used to make walnut whirligigs in their childhoods.

During the Design for Community Based Sustainable Development Workshop, she designed objects of/for Sinop, walnut whirligigs and its making technique were borrowed from the past and carried to today within this workshop. Spinning was held for mums and their kids to make toys together in Gerze, Sinop with local wooden toy maker Adnan Karagülle. Adnan’s female students, who took his Vocational Training Course in Wooden Toy Making in his workshop in Gerze, were invited to the Spinning workshop with their kids. Kids learned and experimented on how to make a walnut whirligig with the help of their mothers, and the guidance of Adnan and Miné.

Whirligigs created by mums and kids in this workshop, combined with Miné’s own Walnut Whirligig designs were also exhibited as Around and Around Whirligig in Hal Store, Sinop.

Photography by Miné