Copper Bowl (Surp Garabed, Kayseri)
Name/Title
Copper Bowl (Surp Garabed, Kayseri)Description
The inscription reads: Յիշատակ է Սբ Կարապետի վանուցն, Կումուշէան Սարգիս, վասն ննջեցելոցն: Translation: Memory of Saint Garabed Monastery Gümüşyan Sarkis for the souls of the deceased 1267 (1851). The bowl was likely donated to the monastery for Merelotz, the Day of the Dead observed on January 7, just one day after Armenian Christmas. Sarkis Gümüşyan was an Armenian philanthropist and businessman who lived in the early 19th century in Kayseri (Caesarea), Turkey. In 1826, he transformed a large house belonging to the Surp Sarkis Church, located in the southwestern part of Kayseri known as "Dışa Şar," into a school to provide education for impoverished Armenian children in the area. This school became popularly known as the “Nalınlı Mektep” (Clog School). To ensure the school’s sustainability, Sarkis Gümüşyan purchased several shops and other properties and allocated them to the school as revenue sources. His sons, Taniel and Hovhannes Gümüşyan, followed in their father's philanthropic footsteps. In 1868, they purchased houses adjacent to the courtyard of the Surp Lusavoriç Church in Kayseri and established the Sarkis Gümüşyan School naming it after their father. They endowed the school with properties and a financial fund to secure its operations. According to a statistic from 1901, the Gümüşyan School had a kindergarten, a primary school, and a two-year complementary section, serving 680 paying students and 250 scholarship students, with a staff of 14 teachers. Hovhannes Gümüşyan, Sarkis’s son, was born in Kayseri in 1817 and died in Marseille in 1902. He received his early education at the school his father founded. He later moved to Istanbul, where he engaged in various commercial enterprises and continued to support Armenian educational initiatives. In 1920, the Gümüşyan School functioned as an orphanage-school. However, it ceased its educational activities a few years later due to a shortage of teachers. The orphaned children were then transferred to the Melkonian School in Cyprus. Today, the endowment of the Gümüşyan School is managed by a committee elected under the authority of the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey.Category
Bowls