Fotografia Gallery is turning out to be a fruitful place for making new friends among both the Georgian and expat communities. Case in point: Michael Hanson, from the UK, who I met at the gallery’s recent ‘Eyewitness’ show opening.
For Michael, it all started with a supra, the typical Georgian feast, this one in Bristol, UK, about 18 years ago. It was organized by the leader of the Borjali Georgian choir, based in the same city. Michael, a baker all his life, learned the supra’s traditions, and was suitably impressed.
Some years after that, he had a dream of Tbilisi a couple of centuries earlier, of which he claims he’d had no knowledge, either written or pictorial. He visited on holiday, and a couple of years after that, sold his businesses (two pizzerias, one of them mobile), switched dough for dough so to speak, and prepared to move here to settle in. His first impression of the city was a bit on the fancy side, having been shown more of the touristy, high-end parts, not authentically Georgian enough for him. “Beautiful country, great food and hospitality.” He then returned by train from Kars, Turkey to the UK. Things were beginning.
Then, a partnership with Jean-Jaques, a French baker who is into the old wheats here, including setting up a bakery behind Stamba Hotel. Michael was also connected with Kakheti all this time, coming and going around Sighnaghi. He moved there during the pandemic, joining friends who had a choir and AirBnB there, and became connected with Kideli, an organization to help special needs young people. Here, Michael baked for that group, and also taught them baking.
Easter three years ago, and he was starting to discover the traditional Georgian paska bread, and wanted to start supporting the Kideli organization by baking and selling it. He asked about who made the best version of it locally, and everyone agreed on one middle-aged lady, Tamila, who was legendary for her sourdough starter, for which everyone came to her. Off they went, he and his local investigator, by taxi to Iliatsminda, the required village, near Sighnaghi. They found her, somewhat nervous to share her secrets until he showed her photos of himself baking, and then she warmed up.
Covid ended, Michael returned to Tbilisi and built a couple of commercial pizza ovens. The Russian invasion of Ukraine started… city rents multiplied thus… and he determined to move back to Iliatsminda. He asked Tamila to poke around for anything available, and eventually this brought fruit. A nearby neighbor wanted to sell her run-down adobe house (similar to almost all houses in this former Molokan settlement, started by religious exiles from Russia in the time of Empress Catherine the Great): “$4000. Come and see!”
400 plots on four roads make up the village, each with 2500-3000 square meters of land and an adobe house. The land being zoned agricultural, he bought it on the spot, in Tamila’s name. No bargaining needed. From sourdough to settlement. No electricity, no gas, no water, a leaky roof. The downstairs floor had been used as a barn for cows for many years. Plenty to do.
Where to get more of those adobe bricks to rebuild? It turned out that many locals in the village were simply looking for someone to take bricks off their hands from their own run-down houses! But Michael also learned how to make them, using strata of the local earth, especially from nearby riverbanks. And to resurface the outside walls of his house, using a less stone-mixed version of the same clay. In short, he is remaking himself a life, far from the bustle of big city life, where he can be of use and part of a community. Welcome home.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
All photos by the author.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
