Irina, the artist who never stopped smiling
Fifty years a mosaic artist — many of Georgia's Soviet-era mosaics were made by her hands. And she has a secret liqueur recipe.
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Our Stars
The ladies & gentlemen of SololakiIrina, the artist who never stopped smiling
Fifty years a mosaic artist — many of Georgia's Soviet-era mosaics were made by her hands. And she has a secret liqueur recipe.
The last baker of Sololaki
For sixty years, every loaf she baked carried more than flour and water. It carried a prayer.
Marina
Her story is being written — we sit down with her, drink tea, and listen. The full portrait appears here soon.
Manana, the newspaper lady
She sells the whole Georgian press from a trolley on Lado Asatiani Street. This September a national newspaper gave her a full page of its own.
Friends of the Journal
Events & people who stand with our stars
What is Babushki Sololaki?
Sololaki is the old heart of Tbilisi — carved balconies, painted stairwells, courtyards that remember a century. Its finest treasure is its people: the grandmothers (and a few grandfathers) who spent their lives making this city more beautiful, and who now often live alone, on pensions too small for the life they deserve.
Babushki Sololaki supports them quietly and regularly: a monthly pension supplement for groceries, utilities and medicine; practical help carried up the old stairs, in person, for those who live without a phone or a bank account; and small paid work — baking for neighbourhood events — because dignity comes from being needed, not assisted.
This journal is the other half of the work. Our ladies are not beneficiaries — they are the stars of the neighbourhood, and this is simply their press.
Write to us
For anything — a babushka we should meet, a question, a hello. We answer in English, French, Russian and German.