Every year at Golden Festival, we curate a marketplace of artisans and merchants to delight the senses, complementing the musical diversity on our stages.
We call it Charshiya, after the word (Çarşı) for the old market district of Ottoman-era towns. Architect Dušan Gabrijan once described Balkan towns as living beings, with the čaršije serving as their heart. More than just a commercial center, čaršija implies a coming-together of peoples as well as the transfer of goods. This is where ideas were exchanged, products flowed in and out, and drinks were poured. People from different communities developed a common language of aesthetics, craft and trade.
Some of this year’s Charshiya artisans practice generations-old techniques. Others are innovators, tapping into their roots and their journeys as inspiration for contemporary design. Several merchants support artisan families abroad and bring their products to a new audience.
This year, revisit some of our long-time exhibitors and welcome new ones! Click on the images to learn more about the artisans and their techniques:
Arganier Noir: Since prehistory, people in Mediterranean regions of Africa and Southern Europe have compounded plants and minerals for hygiene, healing, body decoration, and spiritual purposes. Women, especially, developed recipes to protect and hydrate hair and skin in regions where life was spent largely out of doors, in hot and dry climates.
Red is considered a sign of health, well-being and beauty, nearly world-wide. The Moroccans have traditional recipes for what they call Aker Fassi, derived from edible plant pigments, and used as a lip color and blush. Arganier Noir’s is artisanally created from poppy petals and pomegranate in intense reds and brick and is served up in beautiful clay cosmetic pots. The seeds of the argan fruit, an olive-like plant endemic to Morocco and Algeria, produces an oil that is nourishing and moisturizing and easily absorbed into the skin.
Lamya Zaharoui partners primarily with small cooperative producers in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to bring these traditional and organic colors, treatments and fragrances to Golden Fest this weekend.
DarArt Shop US: Copper vessels, trays and pots were long essential for preparing and serving food, tea and coffee in much of the world. Metalsmiths were among the most visible – and audible – businesses in the old čaršije, as flat metal sheets were sawn and hammered into 3-dimensional forms, and often, decoratively engraved. Heirloom copperware was repaired, re-tinned and used for generations.
DarArt’s copper products are still handmade and heavy; they are planished and engraved by traditional masters in Diyarbakır, meaning “Land of Copper.” Located in South Eastern Anatolia, and one of the earliest places where the metal was mined and crafted, it preserves its vital copper, gold and silversmithing heritage.
Parvin and Yavuz Demir’s textile accessories are produced by a cousin, an expert in woven goods for over 35 years. They also offer oya lace-edged scarves, a women’s artform undergoing an enthusiastic revival for the last few decades. Dar, meaning “tree” in various Mesopotamian languages, symbolizes the tree of life that connects the Demirs to their ancient Anatolian craft traditions.
Ethno Bul Design: (Saturday only) Vezba, the art of embroidered decoration in Bulgaria, is more than surface design. Needlework motifs representing positive spirits and regional identities, were passed from generation to generation, and soul to soul. Embroidered edgings and borders are believed to create spiritual boundaries. These help the garment retain positive energies, keeping them close to the wearer while locking out negative influences.
Based in Varna, Bulgaria, Ethno Bul Design was created to keep these ancient motifs alive by adapting them to modern production and contemporary fashion. In addition to everyday and celebration clothing, you will find cozy embellished cashmere scarves, and hand-embroidered pendants with amuletic symbols.
Ethno Bul’s designs are rooted in, and adapted from, specific regional traditions. But the flowers, birds, vines and geometric patterns enlivening their garments and accessories are motifs shared far across Balkan borders; you will find them stitched in endless variations by many peoples throughout the world.
Falcon Feather Jewelry: (Saturday only) Mixed-media jewelry, designed and made in Brooklyn by Bilyana Tosic Petino. As a refugee from the civil wars of her native Yugoslavia, Bilyana arrived in Greece where she learned jewelry production and began her career.
Since moving to Brooklyn, her work has taken on new forms. Cast in bronze and brass and gilded, metal takes on an organic and expressionistic aspect, never disguising the hand of the artist.
Some designs hint at Bilyana’s cultural roots – hammered metal discs recall dukat coin pendants worn throughout Eastern Europe; pearl-drop earrings resemble those of ancient Byzantine beauties. Others reflect the architecture and environment of her adopted Brooklyn, and her love of bold stones and textures.
Gaspri Atelier: Born in Kosovo and now based in Montclair, NJ, Kastriot Gaspri and Gjenovefe Vukpalaj, brother and sister, continue a 3rd generation business as silver filigree artists. Their complex style is representative of the western Balkans which draws on Ottoman and Southwestern European influences. Filigran is painstaking work: tiny pieces of wire are drawn from silver ingots, precisely cut and curled into shapes. They are carefully positioned and soldered onto an open wire frame or solid backplate, lending structure and depth. Heavier wire is forged into hand-made chain. The work is finished with tiny silver drops, called granulation.
Filigree developed in the ancient world, spreading through Asia, Europe and North Africa, and Latin America. Some forms are particularly characteristic of the Balkans and the northern Mediterranean region: Rings with raised ‘crowns’ were worn since the Byzantine era. Intricate link bracelets replicate, in miniature, Ottoman-era urban wedding belts. Spherical buttons, once edged men’s jackets from the Dalmatian Coast to Iberia. Today, worn solo, these buttons star as stunning pendants and beads.
Like other silversmiths of the Balkans, the Gaspri family traveled to sell their work and repair old jewelry far beyond their hometown, learning and transmitting regional styles en route. They continue this tradition, recreating heritage designs their New Jersey studio. They also repurpose vintage components from Europe into new unique pieces, adding colorful touches of semi-precious gems. Additionally, they repair, and create custom work for clients.
Ikat Room: The lands of the Silk Route still produce some of the world’s most spectacular textiles. Barno and Firuz Baratov import these iconic fabrics from their native Tajikistan as hangings, cushion covers, and elegant scarves. Every scrap of handwoven vintage cloths is treasured, and they up-cycle these into unique clothing, purses and other items.
In ikat, a technique practiced around the world, yarns are wrapped with a pigment-resistant binding prior to dyeing and weaving. Subtle shifts of yarns during weaving cause the hazy appearance and endless variation that characterize the method. Central Asian ikats characteristically use reflective silk and cotton yarns, in vibrant colors and graphic patterns.
Suzani are silk-embroidered dowry cloths with bold repeating designs rooted in ancient Persian and Tajik nomadic life and beliefs. Floral roundels reinterpret sacred solar motifs inherited from Zoroastrian iconography. Irregularities, due to freehand stitching, break the formal symmetry, giving each motif energy and life. Densely and solidly stitched, suzani were used as prayer rugs, tent drapery, wrappings and seating.
Barno still creates arusak dolls, preserving a Tajik tradition that goes back 1600 years. Arusaks were crafted by mothers to protect their children from the evil eye as the parents. After Islam came to Tajikistan, the doll’s facial features were replaced with abstract embroidered solar and quadrilateral motifs protecting the four corners of the room. Wearing a stylized bridal dress to symbolize joy, she radiates sunshine and motherly protection. Constructed of yarn, thread, wood sticks and vintage fabrics from Tajikistan, each figure is handmade and unique.
KOKOMOI: In late spring, Bulgaria’s Rose Valley, the Roziva Dolina, is blanketed with colorful blooms that are its namesake. Here, nearly half of the world’s true rose oil is produced, with a heritage going back centuries. Blooms of Rosa damascena are still carefully hand-harvested in May and June; this traditional and labor-intensive process must occur early in the morning to collect the flowers at their peak. The oil is distilled around Kazanluk, and exported worldwide for cosmetic, pharmacological and culinary uses.
Rose oil, lavender, rosemary, camelia and sweet almond are some of the key Bulgarian products used to produce Kokomoi’s multi-use hair and body serums. Other organic ingredients are sourced in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region. Launched in Bulgaria and Lebanon, Kokomoi is now based in New York, developing new products, and available to the local community for winter skin and hair care, summer tanning protection, and all-around well-being.
Lala Land Flower Farm (NEW this year!): Literally growing a new business from the ground up, singer and tango dancer Elif Onural established Lala Land Flower Farm in the heart of the Catskills. With a mission to cultivate a deeper bond with the natural world, she specializes in cut flowers in season, and dried floral craft to bring nature indoors year-round.
Rooted in Türkiye’s botanical, herbal and bee-keeping traditions, she creates flower-embellished candles, dried floral wreaths, resin jewelry, and baked goods. Her farm is certified organic, and she plans to host gardening workshops and other hands-on experiences in the coming months.
She will also offer a selection of products from our friends at Catskill-based Zeep Naturals, including Turkish organic cotton towels, and herbal soaps that are reminiscent of the Ottoman water-marbling paper art, ebru.
Meri Movsisyan/MovMeri Art: Along the Silk Road, Armenian traders specialized in fine textiles and dyestuffs for centuries. Learning the art of silk production in China by the 6th century, they introduced the silk worm to the Caucasus and began weaving their own textiles.
Batik, the use of wax resist to separate or overlay dye colors on textile, has ancient roots in both the Far East and Pharaonic Egypt. The technique may have crossed from east to west, west to east–or both ways–over millennia.
Revived in 20th century Armenia, silk painting and batik are taught as fine arts media in Yerevan. There, the traditions of calligraphy and polychrome manuscript illumination were revived in a new secular context–on textiles–and combined with folk motifs such as the pomegranate and tree-of-life. Meri Movsisyan brings these skills Brooklyn, where she continues to create colorful silk scarves and paintings on canvas. Her work ranges from figurative to abstract, inspired by a reverence for Armenian tradition, nature, folklore, and European painting.
MT Divine Artways (NEW this year!): In ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Rome, cloisonné enamel work developed as a way to simulate inlaid precious stones on metal. Over the centuries, it flourished into its own complex artform. The process is multi-stepped: A vessel or jewelry item is created in metal. Pieces of fine wire, formed into enclosures, called cloisons, are fused onto the surface with fire. Colored glass pastes or powders are applied to fill the cloisons. The wires create outlines and prevent colors from flowing into each other, defining details in the design after the work is fired and polished. These techniques spread with the Byzantine empire, east to the Caucasus and the Silk Road, and north into Eastern Europe.
In Mery Tavgiridze’s native land, Georgia, cloisonné is known as minanqari. A sword hilt found there, dating from the early Byzantine era, attests to the early presence of enamel in Georgian culture. Originally reserved for religious icons and ceremonial objects, the artform peaked between the 12th – 15th centuries, then declined, until its revival in Tbilisi in the 1960s as a secular art.
While ancient cloisonné strove for solid fields of jewel-like color, Mery’s work is painterly and reminiscent of watercolors. The internal glow of translucent glass over polished metal is almost otherworldly — cloisonne’s spiritual roots inspire Mery’s work, and this is reflected in her studio’s name.
Mery’s other passion is leatherwork. Incorporating carved and piercing techniques with hand stitching and painted details on soft leathers, she creates practical and unique accessories featuring rosette and vine motifs that recall folk art of the Caucasus region.
My Komboloi: Komboloi, known as “worry beads” in English, are secular personal accessories enjoyed in Greece and other former Ottoman lands. They descend from prayer beads and knotted cords, used by many communities throughout the world for counting prayers and as a mindfulness practice.
Greeks discovered that lengthening the connecting cord to create space between the beads allowed the user to rhythmically manipulate, flip or spin the strand. Meditative and rhythmic, there is no one way to play the beads “correctly”. In time you will find your own personal way of handling them.
Komboloi can even be musical! Old-time rebetika (Greek ‘urban blues’) musicians used theirs as a percussion instrument. By grating or tapping the beads against a shot glass, they accompanied songs played on baglamas and bouzouki.
Christine Curtis’ Papou (Greek grandfather) used komboloi, and as a child, she loved to play with his set. Later, during a long post-surgical recovery, she rediscovered their comforting and calming qualities. Fascinated by the lore and characteristics of semi-precious stones, and other natural materials like wood, bone, and horn, Christine shares her hand-knotted komboloi to reduce stress and to transmit this beloved Greek tradition. Find a set that sings to you, or have Christine design a perfect bespoke strand for your hand.
Seven Senses Organics (NEW this year!): With roots in Greece and Catalunya, Billy Karis and Patricia Graells grew up visiting family villages where herbal tisanes are still regularly used for relaxation and remedy. They founded Seven Senses Organics to share their Mediterranean heritage and make these organically-produced and certified herbs available to the public here.
Sourcing directly from small farms near Thessaloniki, the herbs are planted, picked, dried and packed locally, providing employment to village women. Direct importing ensures you will buy the freshest loose-leaf tisanes available.
Their products include traditional single-species teas, including Sideritis (enjoyed throughout the Balkans as “mountain tea”), thymion (thyme), and spearmint. They also curate their own blends, which are comforting, bracing or refreshing, and can be served hot or iced.
Stop by their table to sample varieties, purchase by the bag, and browse a selection of gift packages and tea-making accessories.
Silk Road Slipper: Removing outdoor shoes at the entrance to a home is a point of etiquette and hygiene from throughout East and CentralAsia and into the Balkans. In these regions, esteemed guests are often gifted colorful pattern-knit socks or house slippers to wear indoors. Called cheshka in the Turkmen language, designs are still transmitted mother-to-daughter, and continue to evolve.
Tylla worked her way through school knitting these, but since arriving in the US, Tylla’s sister-in-law Lale, Lale’s mother, and other relatives now create most of her inventory in Mary, Turkmenistan. Lale is also known in her community for her talent as a seamstress of traditional garments.
Originally wool, cheshka are now knit in a durable synthetic yarn, but retain ancient patterns and brilliant color schemes. The slippers are great also for travel, and make perfect gifts for your festival host and your friends at home.
Studio Narona: Studio Narona is the work of Katarina Crnogorac, Queens-based, Croatian-American artist and performer. Folk dancing alongside her parents as a child, Katarina developed a passion for her heritage. She immersed herself further in Croatian tradition studying in government-run folklore schools in Croatia, and continues to perform with local ensembles today.
Influenced by Croatia’s diverse material culture: textiles, beadwork, and culinary traditions, Studio Narona interprets folk motifs in new forms and media.
Woven beaded jewelry from Samobor, kraluš, is the inspiration for her “modio” bracelets. Textile accessories with repeating floral patterns recall the embroidery of Posavina.
The licitar, a red-glazed ornamental cookie, is a traditional token of love and friendship in Croatia, and is recalled in Studio Narona’s heart-themed items. Originating in the 16 th century, it appears in variations throughout the western Balkans and Central Europe. UNESCO lists the licitar as Intangible Cultural Heritage in Northern Croatia.
The Balkan Grind: Just over a year ago, sister and brother, Mirijana and Val Ujkić, opened their Montenegrin coffee house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They quickly found their way to Golden Fest, providing something we’ve wanted at the festival for years – a kafić – a Balkan coffee stand. Back by popular demand, they will debut on Friday night in our Charshiya, selling coffee made in djezve pots on a sand-pan stove, black tea, spiced chai and herbal infusions. They will also bring artisanal sweets, and flavor-infused coffees in proper Turkish grind to take home. (Find your essential coffee and tea-making and serving wares nearby at the DarArt stand!)
On Saturday, they will move to the Kafana and the Krčma on the second floor, where you can enjoy their beverages in a cozy courtyard or tavern setting.
Tingis Designs: Henna body art, jewelry, and Moroccan-inspired clothing, by Tangier-born designer, Noufissa Bernikhou. Decorative henna on hands and feet is well-known as a custom for joyous events in North Africa and South Asia, but henna hair color has been enjoyed in Southern Europe since the time of the ancient Greeks, and is used to this day in the Balkans.
In some communities a simple dab of henna paste, compounded from the leaves of the shrub, Lawsonia inermis, is applied on the palm of the hand or as a stain on the fingertips. However, illustrations and photos from the mid-20th c. show complex geometric henna patterns, resembling those of Morocco, worn by Gorani Muslim women in Kosova. Similar motifs also appear as traditional women’s ink tattoos in rural Croatia, signs of protection and marks of identity.
Visokowood: Mir Medujanin is a native of Visoko, Bosnia, and grew up around its čaršija in a large artisan and merchant family. Visoko, meaning “the tall place,” has long been a center of human habitation due to its altitude and defensibility, going back to neolithic times. Later it became a trade center and a capital of Bosnia in the medieval era.
Mir’s family members produce a variety of wooden accessories, each item displaying two or more techniques: hand-carving, wood turning, polychrome painting, and pyrography (drawing or imprinting designs on wood with a hot metal pen or stamp). These provide income and preserve a craft economy in a city which has increasingly industrialized.
Nowadays, wooden frulas (shepherds’ flutes), flasks for homemade rakija, carved smoking pipes, and intricately carved boxes are mostly made for visitors to Bosnia’s historic old towns. However, these small and functional works also reprise iconic Balkan objects, decorative motifs, and traditional skills, and keep them in local memory.