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Thinking up a name for her art and design shop in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighbourhood, the Tbilisi-born interior designer Keti Chichinadze alighted on a combination of the Georgian words jami (time) and eri (nation). “Jamieri” encapsulates her mission: to bring a contemporary expression of Georgian culture to New York City. The shop opened last year, stocked with a curation of furniture, ceramics and jewellery made by the designers of her homeland. “I really wanted it to serve my country and my culture, with a contemporary approach to the ancient history,” she says. There’s also a café, which was added in the autumn.
Chichinadze and her parents arrived in New York in the early 2000s, part of a wave of post-Soviet emigration. She went to film school and worked as a production designer on period-piece productions before pivoting to interior design. In 2017 she returned to Georgia’s capital, which was experiencing a creative renaissance (“they say Tbilisi is the next Berlin”), and began building the circle of designers and artists now shown by Jamieri.
Inside, pared-back plastered walls, steel flooring and Noguchi paper lanterns form the background to the wares. These include geometric “Brick” candle-holders (from $189) made from charred wood and Georgian clay from Tbilisi’s IDAAF Architects, and delicate porcelain “melting heart” pendants ($95), one of which hangs proudly under Chichinadze’s collar, by the city’s CraterCeramic. Other pieces honour Georgia’s cultural heritage. Queer artist Levani paints mirrors with ghostly impressions of architectural façades (priced between $10,000 and $40,000), and makes marble furniture in shapes inspired by the distinctive Georgian alphabet (from $3,200). Candlesticks are topped with Jamieri’s own bestselling beeswax candles (from $65), handmade in Guria and decorated with curling vines to honour Georgia’s 8,000-year tradition of winemaking. A hand-scratched steel chess set ($3,500) by Studio Gypsandconcrete, with wooden pieces that fit together like a puzzle beneath the board, has also proven popular. “Chess is a significant part of Georgian culture,” says Chichinadze. “All of us had to go to a piano school, and we had to play chess.”
The contemporary works are offset by Georgian antiques such as a century-old clay vessel designed for whisking butter ($699), and vintage designs sourced from around the world: a 1970s Murano glass ceiling light (not for sale) and a pair of 1960s chromed table lamps by Spanish industrial designer Paul Mayen ($1,400).
A passionate host, Chichinadze has used the showroom for design launches and Easter celebrations; it was inevitable that a café would follow. Open Tuesday to Sunday, it serves simple dishes: local bread from the south Brooklyn bakery that supplies the city’s Georgian restaurants, topped with Guda sheep’s milk cheese or avocado seasoned with fragrant Svanetian salt, and house granola with yoghurt and Georgian walnut preserve. A speciality coffee blend has notes of walnuts and raisins (“we use a lot of walnuts and raisins!”) and matcha can be enhanced with sour plum paste.
The shop allows Chichinadze to bring a flavour of Tbilisi to her second home. It’s already attracting the city’s Georgian community and Red Hook locals. “I have both identities in me,” she says. “I feel like a Georgian in New York, but I’m also a very hardcore New Yorker.” An online shop is in the works, and Chichinadze hopes to open a second location in Tribeca. “I’m just happy that people know about Georgian designers,” she says, “and their craftsmanship, design and artistry can be celebrated.”
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