A country house, or agaraki, is a special phenomenon in Georgia. Many Georgians have an ancestral village with a house that their family frequents in the warmer months. Sometimes, if families live now in Tbilisi and their house is in a far region – Guria, Racha – they may only visit once a year or so, or perhaps even less. Those who maintain their country homes, however, may visit every weekend. People see them as escapes from busy city life, a step back in time, nostalgia-filled memory charms for their childhood with grandparents, spent outside.
A country house usually means a garden, and collecting jars of jams, pickles, sauces, relishes, wine, and anything else preserve-able in a cellar, or satavso. Any storage space is also commonly called a marani. Many families make homemade wine in the fall and need a space to store it. Some even use traditional clay vessels to ferment the grape juice called qvevris – or churi in Western Georgia. To scoop wine out of the narrow-necked, amphorae, which are buried underground, a special tool called an orshimo is used. In a marani, or nearby, you might also find a satsnakheli – a trough used to press grapes with your feet.
Traditional homes in western Georgia, called odas, were made of wood and built on low stilts, elevated away from the ground to avoid damp and animals. An oda is generally one story, with a lightly sloped roof and ornate carvings on the railings and eves of the large front porch. Another common design is a two-story house with each floor connected by an outdoor staircase, with a large balcony running the length of the second floor.
Most older country homes lack indoor plumbing. In this case, there would be a small outbuilding called a chechma – traditionally equipped with a squat toilet and a sink in the garden to wash up, but many houses nowadays keep the outhouse building but install a modern porcelain toilet with plumbing.
A traditional Georgian house might have a nalia in the yard – an elevated shed for drying produce, and maybe a kandara – a chicken coop. A property, particularly of a family that owns agricultural land where they grow wheat, might also feature a begheli – a storage shed near the main house, where people keep corn and grains. The most important food derived from wheat, of course, is bread, which is traditionally baked in a tone oven. A tone is a large, round clay oven. Raw dough is slapped onto the sides where it slowly bakes evenly, leaving a slightly crispy crust. Many country houses have a tone somewhere in the yard.
There are many variations of traditional and modern country houses throughout the regions of Georgia. The Imereti region is known for its elaborate outdoor staircases, houses in Samregrelo are known for their pristine yards; homes in Racha-Lechkhumi are elevated to keep out dampness in the humid climate; in Samtskhe-Javakheti there are some houses built into hill sides with grass roofs, fueled by burning acrid-smelling bricks of animal dung; western Georgian mountain homes often have sharp slanted roofs to help the snow roll off. To experience the full diversity of Georgian architecture, there is nothing better than a road trip through the country. For a close second, though, visit Tbilisi’s Ethnographic Museum, near Turtle Lake, where a variety of traditional architecture styles are on display with plenty of historical information and knowledgeable guides to talk with.
By Samantha Guthrie
Photo: Netgazeti
Photo: Netgazeti