I pull up to the gate of The Ethnographers House (aka Tbilisi Open Air Museum of Ethnography) just as it opens at 10 a.m. The employees are getting keys to unlock the different buildings on the grounds. This museum was opened in 1976 as a mini model of Georgia (the country) to showcase the houses on mountain slopes, the ryegrass front yards of the west, and the darbazis (a partially underground dwelling with an elaborate roof structure) of the east.

Darbazi is also the name of a Toronto-based band, founded in 1995, that has studied traditional vocal music and polyphonic singing, including work songs, lullabies, elegiac table songs (of mourning), krimanchuli yodeling, and sacred chants. I pay the 5 lira entry fee and am given a tour by an (or the) artist of the park who talked about the Vagina Stonehenge, a phallic stone with a hermit to impregnate women, a widow who had sexual relations with her village in Africa, and a circle jerk in India to reach a God via a guru. I seem to have that effect on people to have these types of conversations.

The Sajalabo house from Ontopho village has an exposed porch and attic displaying rugs and baskets. Inside are placed a variety of wine jugs along with a few instruments and tools. The Oda house from the same village has more porch beams and windows. There is a lit fireplace inside and more detailed tapestries on the walls. There are elegant wooden furnishings, a few mirrors of varying sizes, and vertical split doors. Another house has more stairs than a porch, a cup the size of a small table, a gun hanging over the wall-length bench, and a cauldron in the center of the room.

Art Palace

In a larger house, there is a sample of wedding clothes that would’ve been worn by nobility. That explains the silk and velvet with gold embroidery and precious jewels on the bride’s dress and the groom’s chokha (a woolen high-necked coat, this one white) with golden-headed silver bullets on his chest and a leather sheathed dagger at his waist. There is a house from the Tskhami village and the Teliani village, and what stands out is how well they were built for their location and residents’ occupation.

Into the trees seems to be a graveyard of wine jugs, some big enough to hold me, and a megalithic tomb (dolmen) that’s mainly found in Britain and France. Inside a large Darbazi, I’m shown a wax seal stamp and then taken back outside, past a picnic area and the resident goat, to the end of the tour. The guide’s kind eagerness can only be met in the States by a park ranger who is fresh in the field, at a newly established monument, or at a preserve with a small visitor count (best if it’s all three). I’m grateful to those who can find what they’re good at and share that joy with others.

I backtrack my morning route, cross the Kura River, and park at the Museum of Theatre, Cinema and Music (aka Art Palace). Entry is 5 lira with no guide. The first thing I noticed is a plaque from the US Embassy Tbilisi for their funding in 2013-14, which helped restore eight historic rooms so they could be opened to the public for the first time. It states that the Palace of Arts is a symbol of the friendship between the American and Georgian people.

There are paintings (one by Paul von Franken 1818-1884) mostly of landscapes and portraits, movie costumes decorated with Ok’romkedi embroidery (braid of gold and silk threads on velvet and satin), and brooches, chalices, and other golden objects. The clothes are adorned with vine leaves and wheat, and the gold with people and jewels. There is a large doll collection from Keti Gogilashvili, and I wouldn’t mind having one or two of them keep an eye on me versus a mischievous elf or three dolls with blonde hair and blue eyes because we have the same name.

The Art Palace was built in 1895 by the best-known European architect in Tbilisi, Paul Stern. It was originally built for a Georgian woman by the order of a German man. In 1900, the building was expanded to the south, and later, the Soviets built a three-floor addition on the side with an arch connecting the historical with the new. The building was almost destroyed during the Bolshevik regime, and the organizations inside changed their room designs. The museum was founded by Arsenishvili in 1989, and it evolved into the current palace.

State Silk Museum

The museum administration was changed in 2009 and went through a much-needed restoration process to remove rubbish, repair the windows and doors, and reveal the walls buried in paint and paper. Historical details were discovered in the Greek, Golden, and Iris halls. There are pictures of sculptures collecting dust, furniture missing legs and shelves, and manuscripts open to rain damage, bright light, and poor ventilation. It seems the reconditioning could’ve happened sooner, but now these items are safely on display.

In a glass case is the first fully staged Georgian opera, “Kristine,” written by Revaz Gogniashvili, which was presented in June of 1918. Its debut was in the Tbilisi Opera House, which comes with a history starting in the 18th century when it was paid for by the Russians. In 1847, Count Vorontsov hoped to better integrate the two cultures by dominating the theater with Russian operas and ballet. The place was burned severely in 1874 and set ablaze again in 1973. Tolstoy once sat in the 800-seat theater, which has grown to hold 265 more patrons of the arts.

In another case is the first professional music score by Aloiz Mizandari, “Tiflis Polka” (1867). The percentage of people who can read music is about 25%, and those who can hear perfect pitch is about 0.01%. Those who can write their own lyrics (as it seems to take 5-11 writers in the 21st century to create a hit song) are dwindling. This man (along with the greats of times past) was able to create masterpieces involving multiple instruments, and I’ve only dabbled in the soprano recorder, upright piano, baritone tuba, and Bb clarinet up into high school.

I finished this part of the museum by seeing more ornate furniture, an artist painting a mural, and a painting of Berikaoba. This improvised masquerade folk theater reflects the spirit of human freedom and is also considered a political satire and social protest. The men wear animal hides, feathers, ribbons, and bells and proceed door-to-door with the accompanying bagpipes to collect honey, wine, flour, and meat served by the hosts. The painting depicting this is from 1938, and this ancient festival (some 8,000 years old) continues today thanks to the persistence of a history teacher in a small village.

This Pagan tradition welcomes the spring with a connection to present prosperity and the blessings of their ancestors and was almost wiped out with the spread of Christianity. It has also been added to Georgia’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013. A little more than a kilometer up the road is the State Silk Museum, which gives off a schoolhouse in the summer vibe or a graduate returning to their elementary building and feeling out of place. It’s oddly quiet in the hall on a Thursday when adults are at work, but in the States, there would be screaming kids on field trips to break the silence.

This silk museum is one of the world’s oldest, being established in 1887, and was part of the Caucasian Sericulture Station. There were 23 buildings (two survive) for scientific labs, silkworm houses, and educational areas. It is now part of the UNESCO Silk Roads Program and contains exhibits from 61 countries that cover mulberry trees, cocoons, dyes, textiles, silkworms, and photographs. The museum has its own library of natural sciences in seventeen languages and some works by station staff members from the 19th century. Downstairs is a room with a shell collection spanning from the California Gulf to the Philippines.

Upstairs has a more relic museum vibe with large wood and glass cases along the walls and standing in the middle of the rooms. There was definitely some experimentation going on as scientists hybridized wild and domesticated moths for better-quality silk and created new mulberry species to protect against tree diseases. The white mulberry (one of three worldwide species) is endemic to the region and the sole food of silkworms. For this reason, it’s believed that sericulture started in Georgia earlier than history shows (5th century).

Chronicle of Georgia

There are some dark vials labeled in Georgian and a container labeled ashes with the quote, “Ashes to ashes, funk to funky” – David Bowie written amongst them. That song was released in 1980, and the video definitely has VHS quality that would be expected from that period. I’m not sure if this was a translation issue or just a curator who likes pop music, just like I enjoy looking at equipment for studying silkworm biology and photographs without being able to read most of the exhibit information.

There are perforated containers for transporting silkworm eggs with inscriptions about trade and economic relations between countries on them. The lab would classify the healthy and diseased eggs and stamp the boxes “pebrine free” from a parasite that infects the next generation. There’s a thread-spinning machine model from the 1950s. The pupas would be suffocated in special ovens to maintain the surface of the cocoon, and then the silk unwinded from boiling soapy water to remove the natural glue before being spun with the thread of 8-10 cocoons for a length of 800-2,000 meters that would be ready for dyeing.

There is a collection of textiles and wallpapers woven on a jacquard loom, named after a weaver and merchant who invented it in 1801. He discovered automatic weaving with the help of pasteboard cards and led the way to programmable machines. The samples are satin, broché, glacé, damask, crêpe, moiré, popline, serge, sateen, faille, frieze, and foulard to name a few (most I’ve not heard of). Back downstairs, there is an exhibit by Levan Manjavidze called The Other Face, an allegory representing the edge of changes and expectations, reality and fantasy, as seen from the artist’s daily life.

The artist stayed at the museum for ten days to engage visitors in the exhibit-planning process in December. I’m here near the end of the exhibition from January 10th – 18th. There are digital prints of his paintings for $450 and mixed media for $200 of children’s faces, family portraits, and lovers’ embraces. Back outside into the gray sky day, I’ll head north again to the Chronicle of Georgia (aka History Memorial, aka Stonehenge of Tbilisi). The monument was created in 1985 but never finished. The top two-thirds of the 30-meter-high pillars (16 total) depict kings, queens, and heroes, and the bottom third shows the life of Christ.

Tbilisi Reservoir

The memorial can be seen upon approach above the trees. I walk up the wet stairs to the glossy platform with a stone scroll plaque about a third of the way up. I’m greeted by a few dogs, all with yellow pins in their ears, that look just as soaked as their surroundings. They will race me to the top and easily win, as I’m not trying to slip and fall down at least one hundred slick stairs. I’m sure the view of the city below is more spectacular on a sunny day, but the pillars are always imposing. I walk around each one before visiting the medium-sized church onsite commemorating St. Nino.

Inside is the juxtaposition of colorful art, white arches, and plain wood construction. From here, I’m going to return the rental car and exchange lari for dollars that I use to pay for a checked bag so I can get all my liquids home. We are boarding the flight to Istanbul forty minutes late, but I’m able to pass the time talking with two guys from Lebanon, Michel Attieh (@doc.macro) and his friend George. We land, and I walk two floors down to the gate to catch the bus, only to get another flight delay, this one double that of the last. On my flight to Bahrain, I’ll sit next to a cute couple. The husband translates our conversation to his wife, who is returning after having gone to Georgia in the summer.