A little house at the Acibadem end of Hasanpasa, a district on the Asian side of Istanbul, contains scores of other houses. In one corner of the sitting room, whose balcony overlooks a green garden sleep other traditional Turkish houses with delicately carved woodwork, dusty bay windows, dilapidated shutters, rugs hanging over the balcony and lines of laundry. Each one is a miniature copy of an original, ranging from magnificent Bosphorus mansions to modest houses with a handful of rooms. All of them are the work of retired civil servant Günfer Taysi, who died in January this year leaving behind his collection of models and thousands of memories. Now his wife Aksel Hanim takes care of the models that her husband built with such loving care. They are displayed on shelves in one corner of the room, the few remaining of many which he made and either sold or gave away.

'We used to give them away because Günfer could always make new ones. But now there will be no more, so I can't give them as presents to anyone,' Aksel Hanim explains.

Günfer Tayþi began making models as a boy of 12 or 13, and continued to do so until his death at the age of 59, a period of about 47 years. But it was only after making a model house for his wife that Taysi began to take his hobby seriously, and turned one of the rooms in his house into a workshop. As the collection grew, visitors who saw them urged him to exhibit them to the public. So when an exhibition was held at Alarko Art Gallery to commemorate the establishment of the Historic Turkish Houses Society, his models were shown in a reconstruction of an old Turkish neighbourhood of 43 houses. These were so admired that his miniature houses went on to be shown at over thirty mixed and one-person exhibitions.

To create the effect of aged wood he applied water paint over the walnut veneer. Tin lids were cut for shutters and garden gates, dried creepers for the branches of plane trees, white cloth on which he painted designs with felt tip pens used for laundry and kilims, street lamps and plant pots made from electric flex, and door handles and knobs made of tarnished wire. Günfer Taysi lived in wooden houses such as these in his youth, and was grieved to see so many of them demolished or destroyed by fire over the years. 'They can never be replaced,' he used to say, 'and building imitations is meaningless.' The endeavours of the Historic Turkish Houses Society and the Municipal Monuments Board to preserve old houses were a source of consolation to him, and he participated in many of the socie'sp projects and exhibitions. When he was asked to give lessons in making models to children in an orphanage in Istanbul he accepted immediately, delighted at the opportunity to share his skills and enthusiasm with others.