It has been a long time coming. For years Cynthia and I carried things home in our suitcases. A piece from Egypt. A basket from Flores. A stone from the riverbed. Each time we found something that spoke to us, we tucked it away. Not to keep it hidden, but because we knew one day there would be a place to share it.
That place is Tangan.
The little boutique itself is alive. IBUKU designed it as a floating flower, with glass walls that catch the daylight and glow like amber when the sun goes down. Inside, bamboo ribs stretch upward like petals. The space is both a boutique and a gallery. Step in and it feels as if the little shop is breathing with you.
The collection tells its own story. Woven baskets from women in Flores. Woolen bags carried down from the highlands of Colombia. Pashmina shawls, made by hand in Kashmir. Each one holds the spirit of its maker, the soil, the plants, the water that shaped it. Some are old treasures, restored and loved again. Others are newly made but come from traditions that go back generations.
For us it is not about selling objects. It is about showing what hands can do. A woman weaving with palmyra leaves. A man spinning wool on the mountain. A tribe keeping its symbol alive in the weave of a bag. These are lives and stories you can hold.
When we placed these pieces inside this little copper flower of bamboo and glass, something magical happened. A basket beside a copper ingot. A scarf lying next to a crystal we picked up years ago. Each object finding its place in the story.
Tangan means “hand.” The hand that weaves, the hand that shapes, the hand that gives. It is also the hand that receives. When you walk out with something from here, you carry not just an object but the time and care of the person who made it.
We hope people feel that when they visit. That they see how beauty and craft can meet, how the past and present can sit in the same room.
This is Tangan. It has been waiting for years. Now the doors are open at Bambu Indah.
-John and Cynthia Hardy
