Georgia's ethnic minority keep rug-weaving alive
The 65-year-old grandmother devotes hours each day to the painstaking work, sitting at the decades-old wooden loom in her living room, threading woollen yarn into thousands of individual knots.
"When I was 16, I got married and moved here," she said, adding that no one in her home village, about 40 km (25 miles) away, knew how to weave carpets.
After weaving, the carpets are carefully finished: shaved, beaten, and scorched with a gas burner, flaming off dust and loose ends.
For over a decade, Zemfira has been working with reWoven, a social enterprise initially started by a U.S. missionary, to find buyers willing to pay international prices for local rugs.
The group works with a network of weavers, all of them older women from Georgia's Muslim Azerbaijani ethnic minority.
Though influenced by Persian rugs, the Borchalo carpets produced by Zemfira and other local weavers are made of woollen yarn, rather than silk, and rely on bold, striking designs on a limited colour palette, instead of the floral motifs favoured in Iranian weaving.
"If we compare rugs to wine, then Iran is like France, and the Caucasus is like Italy," said William Dunbar, a volunteer co-director at reWoven.
He said: "Everyone knows about Iranian rugs and that still to this day is the global centre of handwoven rug production. But the Caucasus is just as good, but a bit smaller and less famous."
Under the Soviet Union, and under pressure from modern, mass-produced textiles, local rug-making had largely died out, with only a handful of older women in remote villages keeping the craft alive. Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Express Tribune
At least 30 injured after train derails in southern Iran
A file image shows a train after derailment is seen near Tabas, Yazd province, Iran June 8, 2022. PHOTO: REUTERS Listen to article A train derailed in the southern Iranian province of Kerman on Friday, injuring more than two dozen people though no deaths were reported, according to local media. "Thirty people were injured when a train derailed on the Kerman-Zarand railway path," Babak Mahmoudi, head of the Red Crescent Society's Relief and Rescue Organization, told the Mehr news agency. A statement from the public relations office of the national railway body carried by the Tasnim news agency reported that after "the timely arrival of railway technical personnel and rescue forces, all passengers safely exited the train". Read More: Pakistan, Iran set $10b trade target Train derailments are not uncommon in Iran, and while they do not generally result in deaths, there have been fatal disasters in the past. In June 2022, 21 people were killed and dozens injured when a train derailed near the central Iranian city of Tabas after hitting an excavator beside the track. In 2016, two trains collided and caught fire in northern Iran, killing 44 people and injuring scores.
Express Tribune
04-08-2025
- Express Tribune
Rain, rain, come again!
An honest audit of modern parenting might leave most of us sweating - if not fainting. Our children are growing up in comfort, glued to screens, cocooned in air-conditioned rooms and cars - safe, perhaps, but slowly disconnected from the world outside. In shielding them, we may be silently stripping them of resilience. And sometimes, children don't inherit our values - they inherit our blind spots. The result? A troubling rise in youth violence, intolerance, and even cruelty towards animals. The absence of outdoor play, meaningful socialising and physical activity doesn't just shape inactive bodies - it shapes anxious minds. These days, weekends are often spent in fancy malls, where kids walk around just looking at things, eating junk food, having sugary desserts and buying stuff they don't really need - just to pass the time. There was a time, not too long ago, when happiness came from simple things: making paper boats in rainwater, cracking peanuts between doors, or a Sunday phone call that brought the whole family together. Childhood wasn't shaped by screens or edited with filters. It was real, full of small, meaningful moments. Growing up, our lives were filled with tactile joys. We played chhupan chhupai (hide and seek) in corridors and courtyards, hosted musical chairs on birthdays, and ran in wild anticipation during scavenger hunts. The thrill of blowing bubbles through soapy rings, the collective giggles while messing up freshly ironed clothes - it was in these moments that we truly lived. Our rooftops were arenas for Basant battles, where brothers proudly displayed their kite collections, and sisters wore yellow with pride. Everyone would sleep on the rooftops with only one fan, thinking about the 'granny' spinning the wheel on the moon! "My khala would visit every alternate Sunday just to speak to her son studying in Russia. With no landline at her place, the trip to our home became a celebration. Karachi-style biryani was cooked, cousins gathered, and all of us waited in eager anticipation for that five-minute international call," recalls a fellow, currently working in a public-sector university and living with her family, having two kids. Today, a video call is a swipe away, yet connection feels further than ever. Nature was our playground. We didn't need virtual reality because reality itself was immersive. Fireflies lit up our nights. Butterflies adorned our gardens. Rain wasn't an inconvenience - it was a festival. We'd float paper boats and get drenched without worry. And the scent of wet earth? It was a kind of perfume the soul remembers. Our winters weren't complete without chilghoza and roasted peanuts, cracked and shared among siblings and cousins. The simple joys of peeling a pistachio or collecting fallen leaves - these were rituals that grounded us in the world around us. Now, that world seems to be slipping through our fingers. Children today are growing up in an era where rooftops are inaccessible, stars are invisible behind city lights, and nature is just a wallpaper on a phone. They have bubble guns instead of soapy containers and ringed sticks. They swipe through screens rather than chase fireflies or build miniature homes out of sand and cement on rooftops, like my brother once did. Gudda-Guddi ki shadi has been replaced by algorithm-driven video content. And the art of letter-writing, of saving Eid cards or scribbled poetry from a friend, is fading into oblivion. What we are witnessing is not just a generational shift - it's a slow, silent disconnection from nature, from community, from gratitude. Children today feel more entitled but less thankful. They're connected to the world, yet isolated from their own. Let's not raise a generation that knows the value of everything but the joy of nothing. Let's ensure that the next time it rains, a child somewhere floats a paper boat - not just for nostalgia, but to remember what it feels like to be truly alive.
Express Tribune
29-07-2025
- Express Tribune
18 migrants die in shipwreck off eastern Libya, 50 missing
Listen to article At least 18 migrants died in a shipwreck off the city of Tobruk in eastern Libya over the weekend, and 50 are still missing, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday, citing reports. Ten survivors have been accounted for so far, the IOM said. Tobruk is a coastal city near the border with Egypt. A diplomatic source from the Egyptian consulate in Benghazi in eastern Libya told Reuters by phone that the migrants are from Egypt. The diplomat said 10 bodies were identified and transferred back home, while the survivors were being held in an anti-illegal migration facility. A Libyan Coast Guard official said the bodies of migrants were found in Alaghila Beach, some 25 kilometers east of Tobruk. Since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, Libya has become a transit country for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty across the desert and over the Mediterranean to Europe. "This latest tragedy is a stark reminder of the deadly risks people are forced to take in search of safety and opportunity. Libya remains a major transit point for migrants and refugees, many of whom face exploitation, abuse, and life-threatening journeys," the IOM said.
