The armorial bearings of the Nakashidze — a princely (tavadi) house of Georgia, recorded across Russian imperial and Georgian armorials and revived in our own day.
You are most likely holding the reason you are here: the commemorative plate shared with Nakashidze relatives in Tbilisi and Toronto in July 2026. Its reverse carries the code that brought you to this page.
The Nakashidze were a tavadi — a princely family — of Georgia, rooted in the south-western region of Guria and Adjara. Like other noble Georgian houses absorbed into the Russian Empire, their princely dignity was confirmed within the imperial nobility, and with it their coat of arms was entered into the great armorials of the age.
The best-known bearer of the name in Batumi was Prince Mikheil Nakashidze (1861–1935), entrepreneur, city councillor, and builder of the family house on Ninoshvili Street — the same house that lends this site its name. The arms below are his family's, reproduced in full on the commemorative plate created to connect their descendants and relatives across Georgia and North America.
No single "official" drawing of the arms exists. Instead the design survives in several documented renderings — a Petrograd manuscript armorial of 1922, a Moscow reference work of 1998, and a modern Georgian reconstruction of 2019 — each agreeing on the family's charges while differing in colour and arrangement. They are gathered here as a lasting reference.
The achievement below — a modern rendering — shows the elements common to the family's arms: a princely mantle and crown enclosing a shield quartered with its charges.
An ermine-lined crimson mantle beneath a princely crown — the outward mark of tavadi rank, enclosing the whole shield.
A golden coronet set above crossed blades — an emblem of martial honour and princely office, repeated in the opposing quarter.
Upon azure, three silver crescents — a charge carried through every recorded version of the arms.
A golden bull upon a green mount, accompanied by a cross — a Caucasian emblem of strength and standing, and the most distinctive charge of the shield.
Four renderings of the same arms, drawn a century apart. The sources agree on the family's charges; the colours and quartering shift from one hand to the next.
A hand-drawn variant with a distinctive arrangement of pelicans and a spiral figure, preserved in a Petrograd manuscript on the princely houses of the Caucasus.
V. Tsikhinsky, Caucasian Armorial — Tavadi (Princely) Families (manuscript), Petrograd, 1922, p. 96.The scholarly reconstruction published in the standard modern reference on the noble families of the Russian Empire, alongside its earlier engraved forms.
S. Dumin & P. Grebelsky, Noble Families of the Russian Empire, vol. IV, Likominvest, Moscow, 1998, p. 184.A modern Georgian reconstruction of the family arms, restoring the design and its detail from the historical record.
Concept & detailing by Giorgi (Gaga) Mikelashvili; artwork by Giorgi Kontridze, 2019.A clean modern drawing of the complete achievement — mantle, crown and quartered shield — as reproduced on the commemorative plate.
Nadezhda Abashvili, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
This page is the destination of the QR code printed on the reverse of the Nakashidze commemorative plate. The plate carries the arms in full colour on its face; its reverse names them in three tongues and points here, so that whoever holds it may read the history behind the heraldry.
The plates connect two family gatherings: relatives in Georgia received them in Tbilisi on 15 July 2026; relatives from Canada and the United States receive them in Toronto on 18 July 2026. One object carries the same Georgian family story across both places.
Coat of Arms of the Princely Nakashidze Family · ნაკაშიძე თავადური ოჯახის გერბი · Гербъ княжеской семьи Накашидзе.
nakashidze.com/arms