Women, Spinning and the Georgian Household: A History of Georgian Textile Craft

There is a temptation, when we look at an old spindle in a museum, to see it as a beautiful object from a distant world. But for generations of women in Georgia, spinning was not an “old craft.” It was simply part of making a household work.

Before wool became a sock, a cloak, a rug or a piece of cloth, it passed through many stages: sorting, cleaning, washing, carding, spinning, sometimes dyeing, and then knitting, weaving or felting. In many Georgian communities, especially in the mountains, much of this work belonged to women. The result was not only clothing. It was warmth, household security, a daughter’s dowry, a family’s everyday economy, and a visible measure of skill.

That is why the history of spinning in Georgia is, in large part, also a history of women’s work.

When the home was also a textile workshop

Ethnographic records make clear how essential textile work once was. In Tusheti, a highland region of eastern Georgia with a strong sheep-herding economy, women traditionally processed the wool. The Georgian Encyclopedia records that girls could already knit socks independently at five or six years old. By nine or ten, they were making chitebi, traditional knitted footwear associated with the region, and by thirteen to fifteen some were already skilled in weaving rugs and wool cloth.

Other ethnographic material from the eastern Georgian mountains describes a similar education. Girls were introduced to wool work from around the age of six, first learning carding and spinning, then weaving. By eight to ten they were expected to know how to knit items such as socks and leg coverings; by their mid-teens, they could be familiar with most of the textile skills considered part of women’s work in the mountain household.

To modern readers, those ages can sound astonishing. But this was not a hobby taught once a week. It was knowledge learned by living beside people who were doing the work every day.

A child watched. Then she helped. Then she learned to do one part herself.

From fleece to thread

Spinning sits in the middle of a much longer process.

The Georgian word titistari refers to the spindle, while kviristavi is the whorl that helps it turn. The Ethnographic Dictionary of Georgian Material Culture describes the spindle as a wooden shaft used together with a stone or clay whorl. Prepared wool was drawn out and twisted as the spindle rotated, gradually becoming yarn.

Archaeologists have found many spindle whorls at sites across Georgia. We should be careful about what that means: an archaeological whorl does not tell us who used it, and it certainly does not prove that one particular method of spinning continued unchanged for thousands of years. What it does tell us is that fiber processing has a deep material history in this landscape.

By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnographic evidence lets us see household textile work much more clearly. Wool was not the only fiber Georgian women knew. The State Silk Museum notes that girls learned to work with wool, linen, hemp and silk, depending on region and household, and that these skills were often connected with preparing textiles for their dowries.

This is one reason textiles carried meaning beyond practical use. A woven or knitted object contained hours of preparation before the visible making had even begun.

Work shared between women

One detail I especially like is that textile work was not always done alone.

The Ethnographic Dictionary records forms of collective help among mountain women. In Khevsureti, women could gather for wool carding in a group known as mchechlebi. In other areas, women were also called together to help with spinning.

We should not romanticize this as a permanent circle of women happily crafting beside the fire. The ethnographic source describes it first of all as work and mutual assistance. But a task that required many hours could be shared among neighbors and relatives.

Skill was visible. It was observed. And it could be passed on.

Younger girls grew up around people who knew what properly prepared fiber should feel like, how yarn should behave between the fingers, and how much twist was needed for whatever that yarn would eventually become.

Knowledge did not always need a written manual. It lived in repetition.

Cloth, marriage and the idea of a dowry

Textiles were also closely connected with marriage.

The State Silk Museum describes young women learning to process fibers and make textiles for their dowries. It also notes that the decorative language of some dowry textiles appears to be connected with ideas of fertility, prosperity and family well-being. This does not mean that every motif had one fixed meaning, or that every Georgian region followed exactly the same customs. Georgian textile culture is far too varied for that.

But the dowry connection tells us something important: a young woman’s handmade textiles could carry both material and social value.

Even the storage of these objects had significance. The Georgian Encyclopedia describes the zanduki—a lidded wooden chest used for women’s clothing and jewelry—as a dowry object and, in the traditions it documents, as the woman’s personal property.

It is easy today to look at a decorated chest, a pair of knitted socks or an old rug and focus only on the finished object.

Yet behind it might stand years of learning: judging fleece, preparing it, controlling twist, combining colors, understanding a pattern and learning how to repair a mistake without ruining the whole piece.

The object was the visible end of an invisible education.

There was never only one “Georgian textile tradition”

Georgia is a small country, but its historical regions differ dramatically in climate, economy, landscape and local dress. Naturally, textile traditions differed too.

Traditional wool production was especially important in mountain regions such as Tusheti, Khevsureti, Pshavi, Svaneti, Upper Racha and Javakheti. Carpet traditions developed strongly in regions including Samtskhe-Javakheti, Kvemo Kartli, Kakheti and Adjara, while felting had important centers in Tusheti, Svaneti and Racha.

The finished objects changed with place.

Tusheti is particularly associated with wool work rooted in its pastoral culture: knitted footwear, rugs and felt. Khevsur clothing is famous for its remarkable surface decoration, combining textile construction with embroidery, knitted elements, beads and other ornament. Elsewhere in Georgia, linen, hemp, cotton or silk entered household textile life in different proportions.

So when we use a phrase like “Georgian spinning tradition,” it is probably better to imagine a family of related traditions rather than one single technique practiced everywhere in exactly the same way.

That regional variety is part of what makes Georgian textile history so interesting.

When everyday necessity became heritage

Industrial textiles gradually changed the relationship between the household and cloth. When yarn, fabric and ready-made clothing could be purchased, fewer families needed to complete every stage themselves.

Some traditions remained because they were still useful. Others survived because older women continued to know them even after the everyday economic necessity had weakened.

That story is still unfolding.

In southern Georgia, older Azerbaijani women in villages such as Kosalari continue to weave traditional Borchalo carpets from wool, while younger generations are showing less interest in taking up such labor-intensive work. In Tusheti and Kakheti, craftspeople, workshops and wool producers are also trying to keep local wool knowledge connected to contemporary life.

A tradition rarely disappears in one dramatic moment.

Often, it becomes quieter first.

Fewer people know the first step. Then fewer know the second. Eventually an object may survive in a museum while the hundreds of small decisions that once produced it—how the fiber was chosen, prepared, spun, dyed and handled—become increasingly difficult to recover.

And perhaps that is why these ordinary objects deserve so much attention.

They are not only examples of beautiful Georgian craft.

They are traces of everyday knowledge.

Why this history feels personal to Kravelli

My own connection to this history began long before Kravelli existed. During visits to my father’s ancestral village, I remember seeing local women working with fiber and yarn. One neighbor in particular handled a large spindle with a confidence that fascinated me as a child. At the time, I was simply watching. I had no idea that years later spinning would return to my life in such a different way.

Kravelli does not claim an unbroken line from those old Georgian households to the support spindles we design today. Our tools are contemporary objects, made with skilled Georgian makers for today’s handspinners.

Still, working with spindles in Georgia makes it difficult not to think about the hands that came before ours.

That, for me, is the beautiful part: not that everything stayed unchanged, but that an old human action can change, grow quiet, and become meaningful again.