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Morning light through tall arched windows onto a wooden workbench inside the Papyon atelier in Karaköy, Istanbul.

Established 2011 · Istanbul

The Papyon Atelier,
Karaköy — since 2011.

A studio of fourteen artists, four new collections a year, and one room in which every wedding invitation is finished by a single hand before it leaves us.

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Founder Elif Demirtaş standing beside a stack of cotton wedding invitations in the Karaköy atelier.

A note from the founder

Founded by Elif Demirtaş, 2011.

Papyon began in a single rented room above a Karaköy coffee roaster, with one second-hand letterpress, a sketchbook, and a question: what would an invitation look like if it were made by hand in Istanbul, then mailed to forty other countries?

Fourteen years later, our atelier fills 620 square metres on Kemankeş Caddesi. We are thirty-eight people — fourteen of them artists, the rest printers, finishers, packers and the quiet voices who answer your emails. Elif still signs off on every new collection before it goes to print, and still keeps the first cotton sample from each run pinned above her desk.

— Elif Demirtaş, Founder & Creative Director

How a collection is made

Four chapters, fourteen hands.

A new Papyon collection takes between six and fourteen weeks. Every step is human — no batch production line, no overnight printers.

  1. 01

    Sketch & sample.

    The fourteen artists in our in-house atelier draft by hand in the same room — paper swatches pinned to a cork wall, calls back and forth over a shared table.

  2. 02

    Cotton, chosen.

    We source cotton paper from a third-generation mill in northern Italy, then order three weights and two finishes before deciding which one the piece will be printed on.

  3. 03

    Hand-finished.

    Edges are trimmed, foiled or letterpressed, then folded. Nothing leaves the press until a craftsperson has held the piece and decided whether it passes.

  4. 04

    Inspected & signed off.

    Ninety-two percent of our wedding invitations are inspected by a single craftsperson — and then by a second. Only then is the order packed, in cotton, and shipped.

A decade of paper, by the numbers.

  • 41,000+ orders fulfilled since 2011
  • 4.9 / 5 across 8,400+ Trustpilot reviews
  • 47 countries shipped, with insured tracked delivery over $80
  • 14 in-house artists, four new collections a year

Featured in Print Magazine’s 2023 ‘New Wave Stationery’ list and the 2022 A’ Design Award (Bronze) for the Lale wedding suite. Trusted by 320+ boutique hotels and wedding planners across Europe and the MENA region.

Provenance

Cotton, from a third-generation mill in northern Italy.

The cotton we use is made the way it has been made since 1956. The mill sits on a river outside Lake Garda; the same family runs it now that ran it then. Sheets are pulled from a pulp of cotton linters — the soft, short fibres left after the textile industry has taken what it needs — and dried on long loops of felt that have been replaced only twice in three generations.

It costs roughly three times what a wood-pulp paper costs, and it behaves very differently under the press: it accepts ink more slowly, holds a deeper impression, and ages into something quieter over the years. Every wedding invitation we print, and every notebook we bind, begins on a sheet from that mill. We mention it because we are often asked why our paper feels the way it does, and the answer is, simply: because it is made like this, and only here.

Sustainability, since 2020: every order ships carbon-neutral through our partnership with DHL GoGreen.

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