I’m Ayse, originally from Turkey and now living in Scotland.

Living away from home for many years has made me feel more connected to the things I grew up with. Whenever I return to Turkey, I find myself drawn to old towns, traditional textiles, familiar motifs and patterns. Somehow, these things have become even more meaningful to me since living away from home.

Over time, I became especially interested in traditional Turkish textiles and started thinking about how these beautiful old pieces could become part of everyday life again.

The idea for our bags came about quite naturally.

One day, while wandering through an old town in Turkey, I found a carpet that I loved. I was talking about it with my mum, Necla, when one of us said, almost in passing, “This would make such a beautiful bag.”

We bought the carpet, and my mum told me to leave it with her. By the time I returned to Turkey again, she had it made into a bag for me.

I loved it immediately.

On my journey back to Scotland, people stopped me at the airport to ask about it. “Is that a real carpet?” “Where did you get it?” When I started carrying it around Scotland, the same thing kept happening.

That was when my mum and I began to wonder, why don’t we make more of them?

And that is where our story began.

Today, we work on the business together between Scotland and Turkey. I look after the designs and everything that comes with building the brand, including social media, marketing and sales. My mum, Necla, takes care of much of what happens in Turkey. She works with small suppliers, searches for the textiles and carefully chooses each piece.

Our business is named after her. It felt natural for something we started together, and something so closely connected to home, to carry her name.

Because we work with existing hand woven textiles, every piece we find is different. We let the colours, patterns, age and character of each textile guide what it eventually becomes. No two bags are quite the same.

What started with one old carpet and a simple conversation between a mother and daughter has become our way of giving these beautiful textiles another chapter.

We are not trying to make something old look new. We simply want to take something that already has a history and find a place for it in the present.