PEOPLE
Founders in Focus: Ssanchia Tan & Amber Chen of TANCHEN STUDIO
Tanchen is the considered collaboration between Sanchia Tan and Amber Chen — two creatives with a shared vision for elevating the everyday through thoughtful, tactile design. With backgrounds spanning textiles, fine art, and spatial design, the duo explores the intersection of function and form, creating objects that bring quiet beauty into the home. Their practice centres on textiles as sculptural elements — pieces that hold space, carry weight, and invite touch. Each work speaks to their shared appreciation for materiality, restraint, and craft.
We’re excited to welcome Tanchen into our collection, beginning with the MAZHA Stool and Coasters — crafted from wood and recycled nylon ribbon offcuts from the stools themselves. Thoughtfully made and deeply tactile, these pieces reflect Tanchen’s artful, grounded approach to living design.
How did Tanchen come to life?
We met in 2013 at Central St. Martins in London, where we studied Textile Design, with a specialization in Weave. Not many people know this but TANCHEN is not only an amalgam of both our surnames—it’s also a play on the word “tension”, which is a very important concept in the process of weaving.
It was at the end of 2019, after we had met up in Shanghai to conduct weave workshops, that we decided to start TANCHEN Studio together. The motivation for doing so was because we wanted to centre weaving as the main practice in our lives, but we also wanted the freedom to explore our interests. The only way we could see this happening was to start our own independent design studio, almost as a sort of laboratory where we could just play around with ideas, and engage in research and dialogue with one another.
What makes a textile more than just functional?
The handcrafted aspect of our work is intended to inject personality and patina into our textiles, and we think that elevates it from mere functionality to beauty.
Tell us about your favourite material to work with — and why
All of our collections always start with us going to trimming markets and looking for deadstock material. We work with that as the base of every material collection that we have. As a result, the materials we use tend to be commonly found media like ribbons, beads, and elastic yarn.
At the moment, we’re really into beads! So many different shapes, sizes and colour combinations to play around with, patterns and yarns to pair them with as well.
How do you want people to feel when living with your pieces?
We’ve always wanted to create handcrafted surfaces that felt warm, inviting, and usable.
We're super excited to be stocking the MAZHA Stool — can you tell us more about the inspiration and design of this stool?
Our MAZHA stool is an ode to the traditional 马扎 (mǎ zhá) stool. Inspired by scenes of the elderly gathering along the streets in Shanghai, the MAZHA Stool is designed to capture the communal spirit of afternoon tea in the city. Made out of a foldable aluminium frame with a seatpad handwoven from nylon ribbon and rope, it utilises everyday, common materials to create a modern reinterpretation of this adaptable and enduring Chinese social practice.
Shop the full collection below.
