Mustafa Hatmaker is famous!

 Buy “Baker’s Boy” Caps for 84 Cents…Sell for $25Date: 09/23/2008

 

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008

Dear International Living Reader,

Don’t be wary about chatting to people in Turkey. Touts will approach you, but not everybody has ulterior motives. For example, Mustafa Finzilman, whose upper-floor workshop is in Kayseri’s Vezir Hani. This is the part of the caravanserai where Silk Road traders once parked their camels.

Like his father before, Mustafa makes old-fashioned flat caps...also "baker’s boy" caps from fragments of woven kilim. Velvet baker’s boy caps are currently hot sellers in England. A few months ago, I saw them on market stalls for an equivalent $25. Mustafa sells his for 84 cents to merchants in Cappadocia—who inflate the price to at least $2.50. I think kilim caps could be a great seller.

Not that Mustafa spurns turning a better profit. Only last week, a Frenchman paid $4.20 for a cap. But after learning I’m a writer, he’s really excited. After brewing cay (tea) and showing me numerous photos of himself as a young man—I’d guess he’s now in his early 60s—he wants to sit on Vezir Hani’s balcony and talk about Jane Austen’s novels and whether I think someone else penned Shakespeare’s plays. Totally surreal.

Then he waves a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (in English) and wants to discuss that. But I’ve never read it and use my ignorance as a good excuse to go. (I’ve been here over an hour.) Mustafa looks disappointed but invites me to return later to drink tea, talk, and “rest.” Rest? Literary criticism is exhausting!

But I do go find him; he may not be around long. The regional government plans to gussy up Vezir Hani. Mustafa reckons the workshops will become spaces for offices seeking a prestigious address—and given to those offering to pay the highest rents. He pays only $20 a month for his space, and believes the new rents will be unaffordable.

In Eski Bedesten, the caravanserai’s oldest part, I meet Mehmet Baspinar of Baspinar Carpeting who tells me my new literary friend’s nickname is "Cultural Mustafa." Apparently he’s always keen to meet English-speakers—and they usually find escape difficult.

Mehmet understands I only want information. He says he buys Kayseri region flat-weave kilims for $38 and sells them for $55—more if he can get it. These are handmade, but look nothing special. The dyes are synthetic and the wool is machine-spun. If a customer bought a large number, he might drop the price to $46.50 apiece. I’ve seen similar kilims on one U.S. website for $104.

Better-grade hand-spun wool kilims of a standard-sized 1.2 by 1.8 meters (similar to what some previously met Kayseri villains wanted $592 for) cost Mehmet $190 to $211. Allegedly! His "very best" selling price for these is in the region of $253. There are many designs, so it’s difficult to give a hard and fast price. But be sure that the first price quoted is never the final one.

Steenie Harvey
Treasure Seeker, International Living

http://www.internationalliving.com/publications/Free-E-Letters/IL-Postcards/09-23-08-buysell