Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace Museum is hosting a new exhibition, featuring the 500-year history of Turkish coffee. Organized in collaboration with the Turkish Coffee Culture and Research Association, the exhibition, titled “A Drop of Pleasure: 500 years of Turkish Coffee” opened on Feb. 17 at the museum’s Has Ahırlar section with the attendance of Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik.

Speaking at the ceremony, Çelik said Turkish coffee was an inevitable part of social life, not only of eating and drinking culture.

He said Turkish coffee culture dated back to the 16th century, and it had particular importance in the Ottoman Empire, both in the palace and daily life, as socio-cultural event.

“Beyond being a drink, coffee exists in the center of a big cultural structure. It also has a very important place in daily life. It used to be prepared and drank in coffee houses and movable coffee cookers. The coffee houses, where coffee culture had been surviving for hundreds of centuries, also hosted traditional Turkish arts such as shadow play, eulogy shows and theater-in-the-round,” the minister said, adding that coffee was born in Yemen and expanded west thanks to the Ottomans.

He said the Ottoman Empire, which was dominant on the trade routes between the east and west, spread coffee and helped it be loved by Europeans during diplomatic relations.

“For example, during his ambassadorship in Paris, humorist Süleyman Agha promoted coffee to French culture. When he was returning to the empire, his Armenian-origin assistant stayed in Paris and opened a coffee house. Another striking example is that after the Siege of Vienna in 1683, the first coffee houses were opened in Vienna with 500 sacks of coffee left by the Ottoman Empire. From then on, Europeans met real coffee culture,” Çelik said.

UNESCO added Turkish coffee and its tradition to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013. In this way, Çelik said for the first time the culture and tradition of a drink was added to that list.

Most comprehensive show on coffee

The exhibition “A Drop of Pleasure: 500 years of Turkish Coffee” consists of pieces from the Topkapı Palace Museum collections as well as the collections of many private museums and libraries. The show reveals the unique ceremony that Turkish coffee created in the Ottoman culture.

Curated by Ersu Pekin, the exhibition is the most comprehensive one related to coffee in Turkey and will be open through June 15.

Most of the pieces in the exhibition are being displayed for the first time. It brings together historical, cultural and social elements of coffee, its botanic features and cooking methods in the world between the 16th and 20th centuries.

source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com / Hurriyet Daily News / Home Page> Arts – Culture/Artss / Istanbul – Anadolu Agency / February 18th, 2015

Most people who think of crops think of corn, beans and wheat, but coffee is also one to consider.

For many of us, it’s the fuel that gets us out of bed and through the day. But as a new exhibit at a Florida museum shows, coffee has fueled history.

From straight black to cream and sugar, there are plenty of ways to have your coffee, and people have been doing brewing it for centuries. “There’s a whole history of it being a very influential aspect of the world,” said Matthew Woodside, chief curator of the South Florida Museum.

As Woodside tells it, the story of coffee is a long one and has a far reaching in scope. “It gave rise to the exploration and the colonization of all parts of the world, and even today, it’s second only to oil in its impact on the global economy,” he said.

Coffee has a rich history still celebrated with the coffee-making process in Ethiopia. “Its very ceremonial, very spiritual. It’s a little different than the way we go about it of putting some grounds in Mr. Coffee,” said Woodside.

Bruce Blowers visited the exhibit to see reminders of the 37 years he spent in Papua New Guinea, where java beans drive the highlands economy. “They saw that it was a viable crop, and so it just spread all around the islands,” said Blowers.

No matter how you drink it, the next you pour a cup of coffee, remember the whole world is in your cup.

Even though this exhibit is in Florida, Washington State actually has the most Starbucks stores per capita.

Watch this report on the Rural Evening News Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET

http://www.rfdtv.com/story/25820866/coffee-a-crop-with-a-lot-of-global-history#.VFcnofmUcb0

source: http://www.rfdtv.com / RFD TV, Rural America’s Most Important Network / by RFD-TV News Staff / Brandenton, Fla / June 19th, 2014