Jewellery – a philosophy of life in Kubachi (Part 2)

The village of Kubachi is situated in the Caucasus mountains, at a height of 1,600 meters, in Dagestan, 80 km from the Republic’s capital Makhachkala. There is no hotel in the village, so tourists stop in the houses of the hospitable local residents.

In the Soviet epoch of collective farms and soviet farms, a common brigade of jewellers was also created in Kubachi. The brigade consisted of 600 people at the beginning of the 1990s and it treated a ton of silver a month.

After the collapse of the USSR, specialists from Kubachi started their own enterprises, but they also continue to support the old silver plant, as it is the only place where young jewellers can find a job. Beneficial division of labor exists in the village even now. However, this enterprise won’t be able to survive without government support, as the cost for its main raw product – silver – has increased drastically.

Several villages neighboring Kubachi used to have joint enterprises with it: for example, if Kubachi’s residents dealt in precious metals and stones to adorn weapons, residents of nearby Amusgi produced steel and made the weapons’ blades.

These richly adorned weapons produced by the Kubachi jewellers and their neighbors were very popular among Caucasian and Russian ruling elites and were known in Turkey, Iran, and even China and Europe. Kubachi produces souvenir blades even now.

In general, Kubachi jewellers have a common artistic style, but each dynasty has its own unique patterns passed from father to son and guarded as a family secret. Jewellers start teaching their children artistic and technical skills from a very young age.

However, since the increase in the price of silver in 2008, many Kubachi residents have to seek out new sources of income, and more and more young people have to look for a job elsewhere and thus leave their traditional way of life and craft.

To be continued

Musa Musaev, exclusively to VK