Hacı Bayram Veli Mosque is one of the most significant structures in Ankara bearing traces of the Ottoman-era kalem işi tradition. The texture selected within the scope of this study was taken from the kalem işi decorations located in the interior of the mosque. The embellishments here offer not only visual richness but also make visible a local ornamentation culture that spanned a long period in Ankara.
Many mosques built in Ankara during the Ottoman period were enriched with kalem işi embellishments despite their wooden ceilings and relatively simple architectural compositions. This understanding of ornamentation, encountered in Ağaç Ayak, Hacı İlyas, İbadullah, Çiçeklioğlu, Zincirli, and İki Şerefeli mosques along with Hacı Bayram Veli Mosque, shows that geometric and floral motifs, colored surfaces, and regular repetitions were used within a common aesthetic framework. This commonality suggests that kalem işi was not limited to singular examples in Ankara but acquired the quality of a local style over time.
In the kalem işi embellishments in Ankara, the relationship motifs establish with architectural surfaces plays a decisive role. Ceiling centers, wooden moldings, window surroundings, and gallery surfaces stand out as areas where ornamentation is concentrated. This situation shows that kalem işi is not a detail added to the structure later, but an element taken into account from the beginning of the space design. This language of embellishment, created through color, repetition, and rhythm, lends a quiet but powerful expression to the place of worship.
The selected texture points to the relationship Ankara established with art and especially with colored surfaces during the Ottoman period. While kalem işi decorations bring movement to the city’s stone and wood-heavy architecture, they also carry traces of accumulated local mastery and production practices transferred from generation to generation. The appearance of similar motifs and arrangements in different structures offers strong clues regarding the continuity of this aesthetic understanding.
This kalem işi texture taken from Hacı Bayram Veli Mosque represents the kalem işi understanding shaped in the Ottoman period throughout Ankara, beyond being an example of ornamentation belonging to a single structure. In this respect, the texture has been evaluated as one of the examples making visible a layer in the city’s cultural memory where art, aesthetic preference, and local style exist together.
