Tamada (Toastmaster) Statue: Georgia's Spirit of the Feast

The Tamada statue stands at the start of Shardeni Street in the Old Town of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia (the country in the South Caucasus) — an unpretentious bronze figure of a man raising a drinking horn, easy to walk past and hard to forget once you've stopped to look. It is one of the smaller public sculptures in Tbilisi, and one of the more culturally loaded: a reproduction of one of the most famous artifacts in Georgian archaeology, set in the heart of the city's oldest quarter as a quiet statement about what Georgian culture considers worth commemorating.

What is the Tamada statue?

The Tamada statue is a small bronze sculpture in Tbilisi's Old Town — at the start of Shardeni Street, near Sioni Cathedral — of a tamada, the toastmaster who leads the Georgian feast (the supra). Installed in 2006, it's an enlarged replica of a 7th-century-BC Colchian bronze figurine unearthed at Vani in western Georgia (the original is in the Georgian National Museum). The figure raises a kantsi, the traditional drinking horn, in a toast. It's free, easy to combine with a walk through the Old Town, and one of the most direct expressions in the city of the Georgian culture of hospitality, wine, and the shared table — locals and visitors often rub it for good luck.

An ancient figure

The statue is based on a small bronze figurine discovered at Vani, an ancient site in western Georgia associated with the Colchian civilization, dating to roughly the 7th century BC. The original — a seated man holding a drinking horn in a gesture of offering — is now in the Georgian National Museum, and is one of the most reproduced images in Georgian cultural iconography, turning up on wine labels, tourist materials, and institutional logos across the country. The choice of this figure for a public sculpture (installed in 2006) is deliberate: it connects the living Georgian tradition of the supra and the tamada to a lineage reaching back two and a half thousand years — suggesting that the ritual of the shared feast, and the toastmaster who presides over it, is not a recent habit but something embedded in the deepest layers of Georgian civilization.

The tamada and the supra

The tamada is the toastmaster of the Georgian feast — the person the gathering recognizes to lead the meal through its sequence of toasts and to set the tone of the table. The role is not merely ceremonial. A good tamada composes toasts that are substantive, poetic, and fitted to the occasion and the company — to peace, to the homeland, to absent friends, to the departed, to the guests, to the hosts, to love, to Georgia, to the future. Each toast opens a theme the table then develops, so the supra at its best is a form of collective storytelling and social bonding, presided over by the tamada's judgment and verbal skill. (There are two kinds of supra: the keipi, the celebratory feast — a wedding, say — and the kelekhi, the gathering after a funeral; the tamada leads both, in very different keys.)

The horn the figure raises — the kantsi — is itself meaningful. Made from the horn of an ox or buffalo and, having no base, impossible to set down until it's empty, the kantsi enforces a particular social rhythm: when the horn is passed, it must be finished. That communal rhythm is part of the deliberate structure of the feast, not just a practical quirk. The raised kantsi in the statue's hand isn't only an attribute identifying the figure's role — it's a symbol of the whole framework of Georgian hospitality.

Finding it

The statue's small scale and its busy setting mean it rewards those who know to look for it. It stands at the start of Shardeni Street (and Bambis Rigi), by Sioni Cathedral — in the part of the Old Town where the layers of Tbilisi's social and cultural life are most compressed: the sulfur baths of Abanotubani a short walk away, the wine bars and terraces of Shardeni right alongside, Narikala on the ridge above. The tamada in the middle of it raises his horn in a gesture that connects the archaeological past to the living present with a directness larger and more imposing monuments rarely manage. It's a small thing, but a fitting emblem for a city — and a culture — built around the table.

Getting there and visiting

• Location: Start of Jan Shardeni Street (by Bambis Rigi and Sioni Street), Old Tbilisi.
• Getting there: In the heart of the Old Town — a few minutes' walk from Sioni Cathedral, Shardeni's wine bars, the Bridge of Peace, and Abanotubani.
• Hours: Open-air and accessible at all times.
• Admission: Free.
• Best time: Evening, when the surrounding streets and terraces come alive (it can be crowded then — early or late is quieter for a photo).
• Tip: Rub it for luck, as locals and visitors do; then carry the spirit of it into a supra — the real thing is a Georgian feast with a real tamada.
• Combine with: Shardeni Street, Sioni Cathedral, the Rezo Gabriadze clock tower and Anchiskhati, the Bridge of Peace, and Abanotubani — the whole Old Town cluster.