Coffee Mill on a Wooden Base

According to the Ottoman historian Peçevi, coffee made its way to the daily life of the Ottomans in 1555. Two people, “some guy named Hakem of Aleppo and a gentleman named Shems of Damascus” come to Istanbul, rent a large shop in Tahtakale and start to run this place as a coffeehouse. In his Seyahatname, Evliyâ Çelebi recorded the number of tradesmen selling coffee as 500 and the number of shops as 300 in Istanbul. It has been recorded that among the inns where coffee is sold in the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul are Sepetçi, Kapan-ı Asel, Papasoğlu, Küçük Çukur, Arakoğlu, Laz Ahmed Ağa and Tahta Han.

The raw coffee beans, which took their place in the palace kitchen and in the houses of common people were roasted in pans, then pounded in mortars and cooked in pots, then drunk or served to the guests.

This mill with a wooden base from the early 1900s was a means of turning delicious coffee beans by hand and grinding them like in a mill. The coffee beans were put into the upper chamber, hand milled and then they accumulated in the lower drawer, finely ground and ready. From there, it was emptied into the coffee pot on a wooden base. Can you smell the fresh coffee, too?