Photos by Maria Deforrest
After a six-month visit to Indonesia, Taber Bartoshesky offers handcrafted Indonesian-inspired pieces at Hunt & Lane in Rehoboth.
When you hear the story of Hunt & Lane, the Rehoboth showroom owned by Taber Bartoshesky, and then meet his family—wife Nadia and their two adorable tykes—you’d be forgiven for thinking that their lives would make a great reality show if Bartoshesky weren’t so chill. This grown-up surfer dude with impeccable taste took off to Indonesia after college to ride some waves, ended up staying six months, and became so entranced with the country’s people and their craftsmanship that the experience led him to import, design and sell the aesthetic on the other side of the world.
“It was an exploration,” Bartoshesky says of that first surf trip, “diving into a culture, learning a new place.” Soon, he became immersed in the island of Java, a “proving ground” where woodworking “is passed down through the families.”
Though he’s been importing Indonesian lighting and coveted teak furniture for a decade, it was in 2014 that Bartoshesky formed the Hunt & Lane brand; in 2016, he and his then-partner founded the retail store. (The former partner, named Lane, has since moved on: “It wasn’t his jam,” Bartoshesky explains.) “I always wanted to have a space of my own, just create,” he says, “creating spaces and styling and designing. And I fell in love with woodworking.”
As Bartoshesky tells it, if you think that Indonesian design would be a tough sell in a mid-Atlantic beach town with an Americana vibe, think again: “It went over great, because it is a little different and it does stand out,” he says. “Rehoboth was the perfect spot for us. It’s a little more progressive and people are into the arts.” Though pandemic-related shipping delays continue to be a challenge, he says demand is stronger than ever. He did have to adapt: When it comes to his relationships with his long-term suppliers, Bartoshesky has had to pivot away from the hands-on approach he practiced when travel was easier.
“I work with little carpenter shops, guys who are like family now,” he says. “We would sit down and pick out the recycled wood from old buildings, and I’d oversee the whole process.” COVID-19 has caused him to manage the collaborations remotely, but it works.
Always on the lookout for successful and popular styles, Bartoshesky has a passion for improvising variations of the Java themes. For example, the evocative Tear Drop and Dew Drop pendant lamps, solid copper, are his own designs, inspired by the long history of metalsmithing in Java, where he has the lamps fabricated.
To hear him tell of his experiences with the country’s craftspeople—with unbridled enthusiasm and awe—is to be instantly transported: “You can hear all the workshops, echoing through the jungle, like ‘tink, tink, tink,’ hammering away,” he says. “You give them a picture and a description, and they can make anything you want. I can send a picture of your face, and they can hand-carve it out of teak.”
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