A three-person atelier on a Cihangir side street, composing archival collages one commission at a time — never a catalogue, never a copy.
In 2016, Defne Aydın emptied her late grandmother's biscuit tin onto a table: bus transfers, a wedding invitation, three curled photographs. She spent a weekend arranging them under glass, and neighbours started asking her to do the same with theirs.
Ten years on, the atelier has grown to three hands and a wall of registry tags, but the rule hasn't changed. — one box, one piece, once.
Small on purpose. The same people who talk to you about your box are the ones who scan, compose and seal it.
Trained in graphic design at Mimar Sinan and 11 years into collage, Defne leads every composition. She's the one who decides what sits at the centre of your frame and why. Her signature touch: a single hand-inked date, hidden in the layers.
A conservation framer with 14 years at an İstanbul auction house before joining in 2019, Emre builds the museum boxes and handles anything fragile. If your originals are torn or foxed, they pass through his bench first.
Selin runs the archive: every ticket, letter and print is scanned, catalogued and returned by her. A photography graduate, she coaxes shadow detail out of prints most people would call ruined. She keeps the registry that lets us reprint years later.
We were shortlisted for the 2023 İstanbul Craft & Print Awards (Bespoke Framing, longlist) and our archive work was featured in the March 2024 issue of a local design quarterly. We don't chase volume — the atelier deliberately caps intake at 6–8 commissions a month so every box gets read properly.
Book a visit to the Cihangir atelier, or send your box and we'll take it from there.
Start a commission