Sevan Biçakçi: The Timekeeper | Assouline

Sevan Biçakçi is a jeweler fit for an Ottoman emperor, encompassing a mastery of traditional techniques largely unseen in contemporary metalsmithing and gem cutting. An Istanbul native, Sevan is a visionary jeweler, fusing diverse elements of nature, ancient mythology, and Ottoman history, literature, and architecture into his award-winning creations. His imaginative designs and singular craftsmanship have intrigued and impressed fellow jewelers and connoisseurs for years, and his awe-inspiring jewels, unique in their storytelling artistry, are avidly sought by the world’s most discerning and sophisticated collectors. Now, in a study and celebration of the essence of time itself, Sevan has explored the Ottoman tradition of timekeeping and clockmaking, which he discovered through an exhibition of timepieces at the world-famous Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. For nine years, Sevan has channeled his imagination to create a collection of dramatic jewels that not only tell the time, but also recount the story of time, fusing the rational and the emotional. This evolving collection of extraordinary timepieces, featuring high-tech Swiss-made movements, have all the allure and grace of Sevan’s original jewelry, bringing his artistic refinement and technical expertise to the centuries-old craft of watchmaking. Returning to write her second monograph on Sevan Biçakçi, jewelry historian Vivienne Becker is an award-winning journalist and author. A contributing editor to Financial Times’s How to Spend It magazine, Becker writes for publications around the world, and lectures and broadcasts on her subject. She organized and wrote the catalog for the first major exhibition of the jewelry of René Lalique, and curated Jewels of Fantasy, a traveling exhibition of twentieth-century costume jewelry. Becker’s previous books for Assouline include De Beers Jewellery (2011), The Impossible Collection of Jewelry (2012), Sevan Biçakçi(2014), The Pearl Necklace (2016), Chaum