Nino Giorgobiani is the founder of the family jewelry workshop Giorgo Biani. She is an art critic by profession and a doctoral student at the Apolon Kutateladze Art Academy. The topic of her doctoral research is the wall frescoes of Anchiskhati Church in Tbilisi. Nino heads a working group in the department of preservation and accounting at the National Museum of Georgia, which is her main professional activity. She also teaches at the Tbilisi Theological Academy. In this article, she describes her family’s work designing jewelry. 

The beginning of our story

Giorgo Biani is our family workshop, where we create handmade jewelry of our own design using an innovative brass-engraving technique.

Every time I had to choose a gift for a friend, I always wanted to give something that I made with my own hands. I thought that in doing so, I would share some of my knowledge, energy, attitude, and taste. With this motivation, I made a few pieces of jewelry as a trial run, using the technique of pressing images into brass. My inspiration was the old practice of traditional Georgian cloisonné enamel. Despite the visual similarity, however, it is neither cloisonné enamel, nor actually that similar in terms of technique.

My friends approved of my first attempts and encouraged me to continue this work. This was followed by my participation in an international exhibition in 2016 called Ethnofest, organized by the Georgian Arts and Culture Center, where my handmade jewelry received great interest and encouragement. This first success gave me even more motivation, and since then I approach the festival every year with the expectation of meeting new fans and gaining new experiences. 

Why “Giorgo Biani”?

The name of our workshop, Giorgo Biani, goes back to the days of Ethnofest 2016. When we arrived at the opening of the exhibition, we found that the English-language name of the workshop was written as “Giorgo Biani” instead of “Giorgobiani” at our stand. Therefore, all the attendees who came by our stand during the exhibition thought that our pieces were made in Italy. We decided to run with this inadvertent mistake, and without a second thought we took this sweet-sounding name, Giorgio Biani, as the brand name for our family workshop.

Later, my sister joined my venture and now the two of us, Tinatin and Nino Giorgobiani, create unique pieces of jewelry based on our own designs, in a variety of tones and styles. Tinatin is a pharmacist by profession, and I am an art critic. 

Giving new life to the old

There were many things to think about during our journey of development, from the nature of the material, its malleability and quality, to the delivery of the jewelry to the customer. We were completely inexperienced in this regard. However, my friend Mariam Chkhaidze, who actually created the innovative technique we use, helped me overcome these issues. She gave me complete freedom to experiment with different material using her technique, which helped me a lot, and for which I am grateful to her. This allowed us to further improve our products and deliver customers well-designed, comfortable-to-wear, and high-quality jewelry to our customers. We process metal by hand using simple tools. After many trials, we found our style, which we never betray.

The concept of our studio is to give new life to motifs characteristic of Georgian traditional culture. We depict them on different types of jewelry (necklaces, brooches, bracelets, earrings) and accessories (mirrors, jewel boxes). The range of themes is quite wide and includes motifs from pre-Christian Georgian art, medieval décor, and ethnographic sources. Our goal is to create a modern Georgian product based on traditional knowledge, which would represent a new interpretation of the old and attract the interest of different generations.    

Work that you value

I have always been interested in all the stages of the development in the history of Georgian art. I had such a great desire to walk carefully in the footsteps of my ancestors and develop and create quality products, that for two years I went back and forth between Tbilisi and Gori to study  cloisonné enamel and painted enamel with a great master, Ermile Maghradze, at his school for cloisonné enamel and engraving. His unwavering support gave me the strength to travel the extra eighty-two kilometers there and back at the end of a tiring work week. Once, the taxi driver turned to me with sincere surprise, “Is it really worth so much money?” he asked. It was definitely worth it, and I am very grateful to Mr. Maghradze for his tireless work and for sharing his knowledge and experience with me.

As for us, the Giorgo Biani masters, it is important to protect and promote traditional cultural heritage along with quality. Each item we create reflects history, and none of them are the same. Even the packaging is individualized: each product comes with a hand-calligraphed thank-you note.   

Jewelry inspired by Georgian art

Georgian traditional art is our main inspiration and an ever-generative source for our creative ideas. We have brought to life many gems from our history, for example, the jewelry and clothing of King Tamar from the fresco on the walls of the Church of the Dormition at Vardzia and a gilded silver brooch inspired by the pomegranates of paradise from the frescoes in the Nabakhtevi church of the fifteenth century.

Jewelry inspired by the clothing and adornment of King Tamar on the fresco at Vardzia

The inspiration for the pomegranates depicted on the brooch are the fifteenth-century wall frescoes of the Nabakhtevi church.

Necklaces with pictogram compositions have been especially popular with fans of our jewelry. Necklaces and earrings based on themes from Rustaveli’s poem “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” are also of great interest.

Pictograms from the eastern mountainous region of Georgia.

A pair of earrings depicting characters from “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin.”

Necklace depicting characters from “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin.”

In 2019, together with the National Museum of Georgia, our family workshop created the special, Grand prize for the winner of the project “Creathon: Niko Pirosmani in the Digital Space” project. This original composition was based on Pirosmani’s paintings.

The composition created for the project “Creathon: Niko Pirosmani in the Digital Space” with characters from Pirosmani’s works. Grand Prize. 

The organizer of the first international exhibition of women winemakers, “Women in Wine Expo 2019,” held in the Netherlands and Belgium was presented with a Giorgo Biani necklace.

Necklace created for the Women in Wine Expo 2019 in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The logos for the women’s folk music ensemble Ialoni and the Tbilisi association, Women In Wine Industry (WIWI ), were also turned into jewelry in our workshop.

Jewelry based on the logo of women’s folk ensemble Ialoni. 

We also found inspiration in words from Georgian music. This is how the piece named “Sun of Love” was created, inspired by the song “Mzis Tevrebshi” (In groves of the sun) with lyrics by the Georgian singer-songwriter Inola Gurgulia, set to music by Mikheil Shughliashvili:

In the groves of the sun, we will be surrounded by buds bursting over our heads, and there will be only the two of us on the mountain full of flowers. You will be my spring, I will also be spring. The sun of love is thrilling, it makes us sing, the sun of love.    

The “Sun of Love” necklace 

Future development goals

The pieces we make are mainly sold through social networks like Facebook and in the shop of the traditional craft association Ethnodesign. We have been involved in the field of traditional crafts since 2016, and the workshop is currently a member of the Association of Traditional Crafts. The jewelry made in our workshop was on the cover of the advertising brochure of the association. The support of the heads of the association, Irina Manya and Ano Shanshiashvili, was one of the important impulses for the continuation of this work. They are professionals with a great sense of responsibility, and they stand by the masters of Georgian traditional crafts without fail and help the development of the field. We also have an online shop on the Etsy platform under the brand name Giorgo Biani.

Covers of the advertising booklet of the Association of Traditional Crafts

The amount of public interest we have gotten has motivated us to expand our activities. Tbilisi City Hall’s project “Creative Tbilisi” gave us the means to acquire some tools for our family workshop.

Our future plans involve deepening our knowledge in the field of goldsmithing, further refining our technology, and outfitting our workshop, which is vital in the face of ever-increasing demand. We hope that Giorgo Biani will move to a new stage of development, and we will present much more sophisticated and affordable products to the interested Georgian and foreign public. 

More Giorgo Biani pieces:

Necklace with agate beads

A necklace featuring Georgian embroidery patterns

Rings featuring ornamental embroidery and mosaic painting

A necklace featuring a traditional embroidery pattern

Necklace with architecture-inspired detailing

Necklace with Ukrainian motifs

African motifs 

 Exhibition of our works at the Ethnofest 2022  

Catalogs of the corresponding years of “Ethnofest,” which include Giorgo Biani’s jewelry.