Indika Imports brings Tiny Wooden Temples to NY NOW

Indika Imports' tiny wooden temples at NY NOW

Indika Imports offers gifts and furnishings from India including apparel, paper goods, housewares, drawstring pouches and little bags, Ganesh bottle openers, bells and chimes, and "Prosperity Hens" made of colorful scraps of fabric, sequins, glass beads, woven finials and handmade goat bells—hens being symbols of prosperity.

Also shown at Indika’s exhibition booth at last week’s NY NOW home/lifestyle/gift market trade show at New York’s Javits Center were neat little items with big implications: Tiny Wooden Temples.

Each approximately three inches tall, the handpainted temples are made in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, home of the Shree Jagannath Temple Hindu pilgrimage site dedicated to the deity Lord Jagannath (“Lord of the Universe”) and a form of the supreme deity Vishnu. Tiny doors of each temple open to reveal the deities triad of Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra.

The temples, incidentally, are in keeping with Indika’s mission of employing Indian artisans and maintaining traditional skills. Significalntly, the Ashland, Oregon-based company does not dictate to the artisans what to make for the western market; rather, it buys what is offered for sale.

As Indika’s website states, its wares are distinctive due to their being “created in an environment so completely different from ours—in this lies their beauty.”