"Don't Forget about the Silver Covers!": Newly-Discovered Silverwork by the Armenian Silversmiths of Kayseri, 17th-18th Centuries
A workshop of Armenian silversmiths active in Kesaria (Kayseri) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced repoussé silver covers for religious manuscripts, liturgical objects and luxury household ware. Nearly seventy objects from the workshop have been identified, about a third bearing the silversmith's name plus date and place of production. Merian summarizes the workshop's history, surveys its output and the iconographic sources behind it, and introduces newly identified pieces, a dish and bowl set at the Manoogian Museum, confirming the attribution through materials, technique and style. She identifies the unexpected models behind their motifs, including Dutch woodcuts.