This article is part of the Mukhrani Village Experience, a community-based tourism initiative in the country of Georgia developed through a partnership between the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Foundation for Regional Economic Development of Mukhrani. Since 2024, our collaboration has integrated research, documentation, and youth engagement to create immersive, hands-on tourism experiences that invite visitors to explore Mukhrani’s cultural traditions.
If you take a thirty-minute drive northwest from Tbilisi along Georgia’s central highway, you’ll find yourself in Mukhrani, a village steeped in Georgian history.
Nestled in the scenic Ksani River valley within the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region, Mukhrani—once the heart of the Samukhranbatono principality—boasts a rich cultural heritage and a vibrant community. As you walk its streets, layers of history unfold: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings from the Mukhranbatoni era, Tsarist-era residences, remnants of Soviet agricultural infrastructure, and the improvised architecture of post-Soviet life.
Imagine a village with fortress walls and churches. Several forges stand at its center—wooden huts with cut-out roofs from which smoke curls into the sky. Inside, furnaces glow red-hot as sweaty, hunched men strike heavy hammers against searing metal. The air trembles with the roar of fire and the clang of iron. Around the blacksmiths gather people from nearby villages, eager to buy agricultural tools and weapons from the most skilled craftsmen. The clients test each object and nod in approval.
Before the Soviet era (1921–1991), this would have been a common scene in rural Georgia. Mukhrani was renowned for its craftsmen, and blacksmithing was its principal trade. Urban blacksmiths belonged to guilds, each with its own structure, symbols, holidays, and customs. But when Georgia was forced to join the Soviet Union in 1921, traditional blacksmithing was replaced by the centralized, mass production of metal goods in state-run factories.
Georgian blacksmithing was almost lost. But today, several craftsmen in Mukhrani are preserving, reviving, and breathing new life into the art of traditional metalworking. Master knife forger Nika Gabrielashvili and master horseshoe maker Merab Maghlaperidze are two of the most dedicated artisans leading this resurgence. Their work blends inherited techniques with personal innovation, ensuring that Mukhrani’s legacy not only survives but thrives in the modern age.
Iron and Identity
In 2024, I met Gabrielashvili and Maghlaperidze while researching Mukhrani’s traditional knowledge with my colleagues, anthropologists Ketevan Gurchiani and Aleksandre Kavtaradze, as part of the Mukhrani Village Experience—a joint community-based tourism project implemented by the Smithsonian and the Foundation for Regional Economic Development of Mukhrani.
Ethnographic literature abounds with mythological tales of blacksmithing in central Georgia, including Mukhrani. Fragments of this knowledge still echo in daily life. In Georgian mythology, as in many other cultures, the blacksmith is often portrayed as a magical figure endowed with superhuman strength—sometimes even as a semi-divine being.
“People in Mukhrani used to joke that my grandfather was such a giant precisely because he once worked as a blacksmith,” Gabrielashvili says with a smile.
Gabrielashvili—a broad-shouldered, hardworking, and light-hearted twenty-five-year-old—was born and raised in Mukhrani. All the men in his family were butchers, though his grandfather, to whom Gabrielashvili is often compared, had also worked as a blacksmith in his youth.
Gabrielashvili recalls being skilled with his hands since childhood, when he used to build steel cages for his rabbits. He was inspired to take up knife making because of his father and grandfather’s profession.
“A sharp knife is essential for a butcher,” he says. “But at home, we always had dull ones. Tired of this problem, I finally decided to become a knife master myself.”
About four years ago, Gabrielashvili forged his first piece of metalwork: a steel sword. When he sold it through social media, he could hardly believe it.
“I posted a photo of the work online,” Gabrielashvili says. “That same day, a client came to the construction site where I was working, handed me the money, and left. In that moment, my emotion was so powerful and so unexpected. It was as if these skills had been hidden in me for a long time, and this was the moment when I had to let them out.”
That moment sparked Gabrielashvili’s passion. He turned to YouTube and other social media platforms, learning step by step to work with different types of steel and craft knives. These free, digital resources taught him essential skills—like polishing steel—and made blacksmithing more accessible, accelerating his progress.
Gabrielashvili says there are hardly any people left in Mukhrani who retain the traditional practices of blacksmithing. So he turned to another digital resource: the videos of Kakhaber Zarnadze, an artist, bladesmith, armorer, and researcher of traditional Georgian martial arts and weaponry. In the 1990s, Zarnadze conducted fieldwork across Georgia to document knowledge of traditional metalworking. In 2000, he founded a weapons forge where he sought to revive long-forgotten Georgian weapon technologies and traditions. Through this work, he restored the Georgian cold weapon forge and devoted himself to studying Georgian and Caucasian arms, collecting old samples and archival films.
“He collected all the knowledge about blacksmithing traditions and passed it on to others,” Gabrielashvili says. “Otherwise, everything would have been lost.”
Forged Ritual
Metalworking holds significant symbolic weight for Gabrielashvili. He associates blacksmithing with traditional Georgian manhood and his family history.
“I consider a Georgian man to be mentally and physically strong and loyal to traditional knowledge, and blacksmithing, as an indigenous Georgian tradition, evokes this feeling in me,” he says. “In addition, I enjoy working with steel immensely. I love when I can create a mirror-like blade from rusty metal.”
Old Georgian ethnographic sources note that blacksmiths were regarded as powerful and highly respected figures, capable of mastering iron—a substance considered magical by the Georgian people. In the Mukhrani forge, the anvil was considered a sacred object. Any curse or blessing pronounced there was certain to come true. It is with this in mind that Gabrielashvili crafts a respectful daily ritual. Before entering the forge and beginning his work, he washes his hands and face and recites a short prayer.
“It is not permissible to use foul language in the forge, nor to enter with bad thoughts,” he says. “You must go in with a clear mind, and then the work turns out better.”
Gabrielashvili occasionally teaches knife forging to his fellow villagers. Through the Mukhrani Village Experience, he now has the chance to share his skills with visiting tourists as well. As part of this initiative, he received one-on-one mentorship to fine-tune his business, Tano’s Knife—focusing on storytelling, pricing, and promotion. Through the program, he was able to refurbish his forge and will soon be ready to receive its first guests.
Gabrielashvili already has new plans.
“I want to master metallurgy—the processing of different kinds of steel, the making of alloy. Working with Bulat steel, Damascus steel, and others is both labor intensive and highly valued. My recognition is slowly growing, and soon, I’ll even have my own logo stamped on the blades, so it’s clear they’re made by me. Once I start serial production, this could become my main occupation.”
Hoof Mastery
From Gabrielashvili, I learned about Merab Maghlaperidze, a seventy-two-year-old horseshoe maker from Mukhrani.
“When I was just starting, it was Merab who gave me a tip on where to get coal for the smelting furnace,” Gabrielashvili recalls. “But his work is very different from mine. For a horseshoe maker, the precise qualities of steel or the exact regulation of temperature don’t matter as much as dexterity and smithing skill. Making a horseshoe is no simple task—it’s hard work, demanding, and strenuous.”
Maghlaperidze, a vigorous man with a moustache and a warm smile, worked as a land planner for many years. Yet he has never stopped doing the art he is most passionate about: horseshoe making. Today, he is one of the few remaining masters in Georgia who creates horseshoes and shoes horses.
Maghlaperidze’s house stands next to those of his two brothers, and together they live as one large, extended family. Horseshoe making is their family tradition.
“When my father started higher education, the Second World War broke out,” Maghlaperidze says. “He spent five years on the front. My grandfather, who was a blacksmith, died heroically in that same war at the age of fifty-three. The family had to be cared for by my father when he returned. Fortunately, he knew blacksmithing, and it was through this craft that he was able to sustain his mother and young siblings.”
But Maghlaperidze’s father was not skilled in horseshoe making and initially purchased horseshoes for his animals from blacksmiths in Tbilisi. Maghlaperidze’s older brother learned how to forge horseshoes from one of the city’s craftsmen. He then passed this knowledge on to his younger brothers. By the age of thirteen, Maghlaperidze was forging horseshoes himself.
Ethnographic sources, such as the book Ksani Valley (ქსნის ხეობა), indicate that horseshoeing was once common in Mukhrani, reflecting the village’s deep-rooted equestrian traditions.
“The Lord of Mukhrani once had a blacksmith for every trade at his court,” Maghlaperidze says. “After Sovietization, this tradition completely disappeared. By the time I was a kid, there were only two or three people left who knew horseshoe making. Then my family took it up.”
Maghlaperidze and his brothers were the ones who revived the tradition in Mukhrani. In order to serve farmers tending to winter pastures nearby, by autumn they would have to have shoes ready for 500 horses.
Now, Maghlaperidze has maintained and expanded the craft. He not only forges horseshoes but also shoes the horses himself, a skill that makes him one of the country’s rarest specialists. Shoeing a horse is a demanding task, and few dare to take it on.
“Do you know why it’s so difficult?” he asks, smiling. “When you drive the nail into the hoof, if you do it incorrectly—if it goes in too deep—it pierces the horse’s flesh and can cause an infection. You need a well-developed sense of proportion in your eye, and no matter how experienced you are, mistakes can still happen. On average, it takes me twenty to thirty minutes per hoof.”
As Maghlaperidze explains, an inexperienced horseshoer can easily frighten the horse, which may kick and injure them. Today, Maghlaperidze must also master more innovative approaches.
“Now, horse hoof ‘manicure’ has come into fashion. Just yesterday, I shod horses in Mtskheta. They keep horse-drawn carriages, and sometimes competitions are held, so in those cases, you must finish the hooves more neatly,” he says.
From Maghlaperidze, I learned that horseshoes vary greatly depending on their function and context.
“The horseshoe for a racing horse is different from that of a workhorse,” he explains. “There are many types of shoes. Right now, I have an order from Kazbegi [in the mountains of eastern Georgia]. The border guards there keep horses, and to help them walk safely on ice, I need to forge shoes with three-centimeter-long studs.”
Maghlaperidze’s wife tells me that he has only recently come into the spotlight, thanks to the Mukhrani Village Experience. Although he has yet to receive any national awards or official recognition, Maghlaperidze is a happy man. He loves his work deeply and continues it with unwavering passion and dedication.
At the same time, Maghlaperidze is deeply concerned that younger generations show little interest in learning the skill. His son is a dentist and no longer has time to practice horseshoeing. His grandson has recently taken his university entrance exams, so he will likely no longer have time for horseshoeing lessons.
But Maghlaperidze is determined to pass on his experience to young people beyond his family.
He notes that horseshoeing is not only a tradition but also a highly profitable craft. As the number of stables in Georgia grows, so does the demand for skilled horseshoe masters. So far, most of his apprentices have other occupations and find it difficult to dedicate enough time to mastering the craft in depth. But Maghlaperidze and his family are hopeful that visits from guests interested in his workshop will soon begin, allowing the master to share his beloved craft with others.
In Mukhrani, blacksmiths like Gabrielashvili and Maghlaperidze are not only preserving a centuries-old craft—they’re reigniting its relevance for modern Georgia.
“It’s been tough so far,” Maghlaperidze says, “and it’s a difficult time for the country in general, but I’m confident we will overcome this, too.”
Tinatin Khomeriki is a postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and assistant professor of anthropology at Free University of Tbilisi. Her work focuses on urban anthropology and cultural heritage, with research affiliations at the National Trust of Georgia and ZOiS in Berlin.
