The Kajarova sisters, 68-year-old Fatma and 72-year-old Tukazban, have been helping their grandmother weave carpets since childhood. The sisters have lived their whole lives in the village of Kosalar, located in the southern Georgian region of Kvemo Kartli.
The Borchalo carpets they weave are made only in Kosalar and the village of Iormughanlo, in the neighbouring Kakheti region — only a few dozen women carry on the carpet weaving tradition.
‘I was six years old when I first helped grandma [make carpets]’, Fatma told OC Media.
Weaving carpets by hand is a long and laborious process, with the average carpet taking at least two women working between one and two months — the difficult nature of the work means the tradition is left almost solely in the hands of the elderly.
‘There are now very few women left in our village who weave carpets, and it’s very rare for anyone from the younger generation to be able to make a carpet from start to finish’, Fatma said.
Borchalo carpets have a centuries-old history in Georgia, and are decorated with unique and complex symbols to express a variety of often abstract concepts such as the strengthening of the family, its protection, or even migration.
Before joining OC Media as a reporter, Tata worked as a journalist in the Georgian newspaper Resonance for over two years. She is interested in politics, social issues and especially everything relat
Over the last month, Azerbaijan’s official government news agency Azertac has published multiple articles focusing on ethnic Azerbaijani candidates running for the ruling Georgian Dream party, while failing to provide a platform for Azerbaijani opposition candidates.
On 16 October, Azertac interviewed Georgian Dream MP Zaur Darghalli, who said that his party had guaranteed stability in Georgia, and elaborated on how it was able to keep the peace for the last 12 years.
‘These elections are
With Georgia’s parliamentary elections inching closer, both the ruling Georgian Dream party and the many groups representing the opposition are scrambling to prepare for the critical vote on 26 October.
This week, OC Media’s Robin Fabbro, Mariam Nikuradze, and Shota Kincha discuss how the pre-election campaign period has been going, claims of electoral violations by Georgian Dream, and the atmosphere in Georgia ahead of the vote.
Read more:
* Who’s who in Georgia’s pa
Georgia’s parliamentary elections on 26 October, unlike the previous vote, will be held without any gender quotas. As women’s representation in Georgian politics remains an issue, we have examined the electoral lists of all the major parties and groupings and ranked them based on how many women they included — and how highly they were placed.
The ruling Georgian Dream party pushed through mandatory gender quotas ahead of the 2020 parliamentary and 2021 local elections in an apparent bid to pro
A Georgian elections watchdog has published a report outlining the increased use of AI technology in the pre-election period, including the creation of deep fakes based on opposition politicians.
On Tuesday, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) reported that anonymous actors had used AI technologies to forge the voices of Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili and For Georgia chair Giorgi Gakharia in videos shared on social media.
According to ISFED, one such a
