Inspiration from Ottoman Culture

The new Graf von Faber-Castell Pen of the Year 2024: Ottoman Culture recalls the era when Europe's fascination with Turkish art and culture began.

- BY SUZANNE C. LEE

Germany's Graf von Faber-Castell once again offers us an annual gift: the Pen of the Year, a fountain pen that pays tribute to a culture or society that has had a profound effect on our world. From Samurai warriors, who embodied Japanese society's highest ideals such as honor, to Spartans, who eschewed the company of their wives in favor of communal barracks to be more purely warriors, we have been generously presented with the rich history of humanity in all of its beautiful incarnations. The Graf von Faber-Castell Pen of the Year 2024: Ottoman Culture, which was released in November 2024, continues in that vein: the exquisite specifics of a moment in time and a particular culture are captured, somehow, by a writing instrument.

Turquerie—loosely translatable as "Turkish clothing"—is a word meant to evoke the fashionable, artistic, and architectural trends in Europe that occurred when the continent was exposed to Ottoman culture, particularly through the arrival of ambassadors. Appreciation for Ottoman cultural markers battled with fear of an unknown other, but the result was a magnificent expression of artistic exchange and a synthesis of two distinct cultures.

Turquerie aesthetics are wondrous in the truest sense of the word; the excitement of discovery and connection can be felt through the artistic object. Graf von Faber-Castell's Pen of the Year 2024: Ottoman Culture is an experience, not static but fluid, conveying the sense of awe Europeans must have felt when first exposed to it.