Leyla Taranto is a jewellery and accessories designer. She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Istanbul. Between 2000 and 2003 she trained in jewellery craftsmanship by local Turkish artists and artisans. She received a diploma in Design Culture and Management in 2008 from a joint programme by Bilgi University of Istanbul and Domus Academy of Milano.

In 2006, Taranto established her own studio, Toz Design, and since then continues to experiment with both traditional and alternative, non-traditional materials and methods for jewellery design, combining the two for unique pieces.

The designer finds it most interesting to explore the nature of “value” through unconventional materials -rubber, nonwoven, packing foam and, in the case of the Remains collection, discarded wood frames. In the process, she says, it is possible to elevate so-called “low” materials (once considered useless hence disposable) by a series of creative choices. 

Leyla Taranto’s work has been featured in three solo exhibitions in Turkey and has been selected for many exhibitions throughout Europe, China, New York and Israel.

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“These pieces of jewellery are from my ongoing Remains collection, a long-term project of mine. To make them, I salvage leftover scraps of decorative wood pieces used to craft custom picture frames from the floors of Istanbul frame shops. 

I try to give the embellished fragments a new life through a series of inventive choices that elevate what was once considered disposable by giving it conceptual, emotional or aesthetic--instead of merely material--value. 

As frames, the materials are meant to take part in a dialogue with both the artwork and the viewers of that art; here the dialogue takes a different form as they become art pieces themselves, adorning bodies.”

“In creating this collection, I found it gratifying that, through design, I had the opportunity to give these scraps an unanticipated usefulness and to enable the parts to recover a wholeness all of their own. In return, the scraps provided me with a material that was simultaneously noble (wood) and worthless (waste), allowing me to juxtapose the presumably precious against the not-precious, a theme that I have touched on previously in my work.”