Medet Kara was born in 1962 in Kozlubel, very near Eskisehir, Turkey. Having completed some minimal schooling, Medets father noticed his proclivity towards carving and the facility with which he worked. Therefore, before his twelfth birthday, Medet was apprenticed to the husband of his aunt, an accomplished and locally respected meerschaum carver. So his long career as a carver of meerschaum pipes began in 1973, almost thirty years before he created the Gülel Meerschaum brand.

A few years later, following his apprenticeship with his uncle, he joined Merger Meerschaum, a small, yet celebrated meerschaum carving company based in Eskisehir during the late 1970s and 1980s (though the current status of the company is unknown to us). While with Merger Meerschaum, Medet and his colleagues received numerous carving awards.

Following this, he and his brother, Imdat Kara, founded Emin Meerschaum pipes as their own brand. Beginning in 1989, they began making pipes for the export market. Medet and Imdat were featured in Pipes and Tobaccos Magazine in their Fall 1998 issue on meerschaum carving, though they were misnamed as Medet and Imdat Emin, rather than Kara.

In 2001, Medet and Imdat decided to no longer work together. Imdat retained rights to the Emin brand name and Medet, in early 2002, founded Gülel Meerschaums, named for Medet and Imdats mother. They continue to spend considerable time together and occasionally still work together, though their styles have increasingly diverged.

Today, Medet Kara makes Gülel Meerschaums in the village of his birth, Kozlubel. He feels that the quiet village life gives him the comfort and time to reflect and create his best possible work. His favorite shapes to make are the Sultan head (available in the MD size) and the Eagle Claw (available in both MD and LD sizes).

His students assist him in the rough shaping and cutting of the meerschaum as well as in the final finishing. Medet is a firm believer in the apprentice system that has been in place for generations and he feels that the only way his work can live on past his death is through his students. He loves teaching them almost as much as he loves to make works of art from meerschaum. Medet feels a very close connection with his work and in speaking with him, one almost gets a sense that the pipes represent a sort of progeny for him. He hews them from raw blocks of meerschaum and creates something both beautiful and smokeable: it is easy to understand this inherent link that the artisan feels for his work.

He lives with his wife and two children in Kozlubel.