Museum exhibits centuries of Syrian-Armenian metalwork
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Hrazdan Tokmajyan, a painter, art historian, and ethnographer, curated an exhibition at the Yerevan Museum of Folk Art displaying tools used by generations of Syrian-Armenian coppersmiths.
The collection originated with Hovhannes Kalemkerian, the last master craftsman from a renowned family who lived in Aleppo, Syria. Tokmajyan, who befriended Kalemkerian while teaching in Aleppo starting in 1993, brought approximately two tons of tools to Armenia in 2013 with the hope of establishing a craft school.
The exhibition features over 140 anvils, 100 hammers and chisels, and ten examples of finished copperware to demonstrate the tools’ purpose. These tools represent not only the Kalemkerian family’s heritage, spanning around two hundred years, but also items collected from other Armenian craftsmen in Aleppo as their masters passed away. Tokmajyan documented the family’s history in a 2016 book coinciding with the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.
Tokmajyan also authored five other books about Syrian-Armenian artisans, funded by the local Armenian community in Aleppo. He is currently seeking funding to publish a 450-page illustrated encyclopedia of Syrian-Armenian coppersmiths, featuring nearly all the artisans active in Syria from the late 19th century through the Syrian war. The director of the Museum of Folk Art, Lusineh Toroyan, is assisting with fundraising, hoping to preserve and potentially gain international recognition for Armenian metalworking traditions.
