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Hasan Onerbay, an industrialist who works in hydraulics, pneumatics and automation, relieves the stress of a busy work schedule with antique wooden radios kept at his company’s office in Istanbul and with the antiques world he discovered in Balat.
Balat is a historic district of Istanbul known for its antique shops.
His interest began in childhood with an old radio his grandmother brought from Germany in the 1980s. It grew into a serious collection two years ago, when Onerbay met antique dealer Aydin Cemal during a trip to Balat.
Onerbay told Anadolu Agency (AA) that he loves his father’s trade but keeps his passion for the past alive through radios.
He said the wooden texture and nostalgic sound of the devices give him peace, and the hobby has led him to plan a museum.
“Classics never go out of fashion,” Onerbay said, adding that the old feels more sincere to him and that he extends the same admiration to older cars.
Onerbay said he values the look and woodwork of the radios more than their technical side. When adding a piece, he checks that it is original, clean, flawless, complete and working.
“I like wood because I love nature. Seventy percent of the radios in our collection are working and well maintained,” he said.
Radios that lack an FM module can have the feature added later, which lets him listen to broadcasts on the antique sets.
He sometimes plays a record with the lights off, and fellow tradespeople who visit tell him they find peace there. He cleans the radios himself once a week without special chemicals.
Limited space currently keeps Onerbay from adding new radios. “In the future, my plan is to build a bigger place and open a museum, increasing the number of radios and becoming a full radio collector,” he said.
His collection includes British, American, Russian, French and German radios as well as local models.
One standout piece is a wooden music cabinet with a display case and a record player, designed like a piece of furniture, which he bought from Cemal’s private collection after repeated requests. The cabinet has its original structure intact and an FM radio, and he listens to it often.
Cemal and his wife, Meryem, restored a historic shop in Balat and turned it into Sanat Kafe, where Onerbay sources his radios.
Cemal said he was born in a poor village on the Black Sea and that the itinerant peddling he did with his father as a child, when trade was done by barter with items such as eggs and copper vessels, remains the biggest inspiration for his work.
After the family moved to a big city, Cemal brought his accumulated old items to Balat, where he came across auction-style markets. He said he has since gathered thousands of objects dating from the 1850s to the 1990s.
Sanat Kafe also hosts shellac record and fairy tale listening sessions as well as history and literature talks.
Cemal said items that are 50 years old count as retro or period pieces and that an object must be at least 100 years old to enter antique literature.
Cemal said memories of his late grandfather’s wooden Delta radio, which carried news and folk songs from the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) choir, led him to collect radios and other antiques.
Cemal said his aim is to keep cultural heritage alive rather than to trade. He said Onerbay visited his shop one day and liked one of the radios, and that more than 40 antique radios in the collection have since come through him.
“When I asked him, ‘What will you do with these?’ he told me about his dream of opening a museum,” Cemal said.
Cemal said people who migrated to large cities are moved when they see household items from earlier, harder years in his shop. “I have seen many people see an old object in my shop and be unable to hold back tears,” he said. If visitors cannot afford such an item, he gives it to them as a gift.
Generation Z also shows strong interest in cassettes, old letters, coins and rotary phones, Cemal said, adding that he shows children how a rotary phone works.
He said his main goal is to connect people with their memories and pass objects that witnessed history to the future undamaged.
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