A trip to Nusantara can make a visitor feel like a world traveler, no passport required. Browsing the sprawling Essex store, shoppers might come across a copper water pot from Nepal ($2,195), a beaded anklet from Afghanistan ($127), a marionette doll crafted in Burma ($57) or cozy alpaca socks made in Peru ($22).
Nusantara, which means “archipelago” in ancient Javanese, opened at the Essex Experience shopping center in November 2022. The retailer sells antique furniture, art, clothing, jewelry and knickknacks from 70 countries, with an emphasis on Asia. Business partner and creative director Kimberly Harris hopes to eventually offer products from every country worldwide — while maintaining personal relationships with Nusantara’s suppliers.
“It’s really important that it’s handmade and we know the people we’re buying from,” Harris said of the store’s inventory. “Even things that I have from China, I actually know the owners of the companies.”
While Nusantara’s retail location is relatively new, the company is not. Rutland resident Steven Mustukas founded it as a wholesale business in 1980, selling antiques and textiles mostly to small, independent retailers through trade shows. His wife, Meg Clippingdale, is also a business partner. At its peak, Nusantara sold to nearly 3,000 shops. Mustukas pivoted to direct-to-consumer retail during the pandemic, when in-person trade shows were no longer an option.
The 6,000-square-foot store is carefully curated, down to the display tables. A glass table with swan-shaped legs once belonged to Frank Sinatra and serves as a striking centerpiece. Blue walls mirror the shade of one of the shop’s antique textiles, dyed with fermented indigo. In the back corner sits a “Full House” pinball machine, a gift Mustukas received for his birthday. And in the center of the showroom, a large disco ball, crafted by Yolanda Baker — the last known disco ball maker in the U.S. — dangles overhead. Baker has made mirror balls for Beyoncé, Madonna, Studio 54 and the Saturday Night Fever movie set.
Mustukas, 74, credits the luck of the draw with determining the course of his life. As a 20-year-old living in New York City during the Vietnam War, he was drafted and sent to Thailand. Mustukas’ chance assignment to Thailand rather than Vietnam may have not only spared his life but also sparked a lifelong love of travel. Mustukas, who moved to Vermont in the late 1970s, estimated that he’s spent six years of his life abroad — including a year and a half in Thailand — and has visited 38 countries. He speaks Danish, Greek, Thai and Indonesian with varying degrees of fluency.
During his travels, Mustukas was struck by the stunning craftsmanship he encountered. It occurred to him that he could bridge a gap in the market, giving Americans access to merchandise that wouldn’t otherwise be shipped abroad while also paying craftspeople fair prices. In Indonesia, he posted a sign in the local language reading, “Westerner will buy your old textiles.” Soon, women were lining up in droves.
Mustukas claims to know as much about textiles as he does “about a moon rock,” but during a recent visit to the Essex store the septuagenarian sported a stylish green button-up shirt with an abstract geometric design and acknowledged he “has a pretty good eye” for fashion. He also has a penchant for reminiscing, often offering customers travel tips and regaling them with tales of his years abroad.
For instance, Mustukas recalled once taking goods by canoe across the Mekong River on the border of Laos and Thailand, then strapping the wares to the top of a bus.
“I’ve gone to some ridiculously remote places to get these pieces,” Mustukas said. “You prayed it didn’t rain.”
Nusantara’s commitment to small-scale craftsmanship is part of what sold developer Peter Edelmann, owner of the Essex Experience, on the shop. The store aligns with his vision for a shopping center that spotlights local businesses rather than impersonal chains. Nusantara is surrounded by clothing boutiques, an art gallery, a craft brewery and a spa with a therapeutic salt cave.
“What I’m looking to do, and I think I’ve done, is add unique players, one of a kind,” Edelmann said, adding that Nusantara’s global offerings in small-town Vermont fit the bill.
Nusantara’s Rutland warehouse is stocked with tens of thousands of items. When Harris first visited, the place looked “like Aladdin’s cave,” she said. “I was blown away. It was floor to ceiling. I got lost in it.”
She’s in the process of moving the warehouse to a 20,000-square-foot space in Fairfax, where she plans to allow customers to set up appointments and shop the boundless inventory.
“If you walk around the store, you get an education.” Michelle Jackson
Essex resident Michelle Jackson, 75, is a Nusantara regular. She’s bought a dress there for her daughter to wear to a wedding, along with jewelry, candles, pants, scarves and hats. She said the store brings back memories of the time she lived in Thailand and Japan.
“If you walk around the store, you get an education,” Jackson said. “All you have to do is ask somebody ‘Could you explain this to me?’ or ‘Where did this come from?’ And immediately, they’re into the detail of it.”
Though Mustukas has stopped traveling since the pandemic, many of the shop’s items still evoke memories of his adventures. That experience was evident as Harris and Mustukas gave Seven Days a tour of the store. Singing bowls, handmade in Nepal and Tibet, are among Nusantara’s most popular items. To demonstrate how they work, Mustukas struck one, producing a sustained musical note. He held up a 50-year-old handwoven textile from Sumba, an island in Indonesia, and pointed out a century-old tea table from Rajasthan, India.
Mustukas lit up when describing a 19th-century Chinese apothecary cabinet ($3,900) with 32 drawers that he referred to as the store’s “pièce de résistance.” Though painted over, each drawer originally bore a Chinese character indicating which herb was stored inside.
How amazing, he said, that such treasures are now sold in Vermont.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Worldly Pleasures | Nusantara brings a global marketplace to Essex”
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.
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