Before I'm taking you on a little inspirational travel through the orient, I want to tell you the story behind it first: My family stems from southern Serbia. It's the bordering area between Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and it has always been the orient for me when I was a kid. I was born and raised in Austria, in a typical Western European society, landscape, and visual world. But every year when we traveled down to what then was Yugoslavia, I was embarking on an adventure from 1001 nights. I felt like a kid on a magic carpet discovering a region full of people dressed in folk costumes, cities dotted with mosques and churches, colourful and loud bazars. It was the adventurous life of spending summers at my grandparents' house, dining under the vine covered porch, sitting on lumbar kilim cushions, meeting friends at the village's well. Today, all this seems like a far-away fairytale.
This private background must be the reason why I still love oriental home accessories like my vintage kilim rug and cushions, hammered metal bowls, mosaic vases. Well, there is one thing from my childhood that I sort of disliked. My mother would always ask me to grind the coffee in one of those old bronze coffee grinders. She would then prepare Turkish mocca. As much as I disliked the grinding as a kid, today I own my mother's old coffee grinder as a dear souvenir of a happy childhood. And a memory of my roots. Happy Friday!
Photography by Igor Josifovic
