The story of how realtor Brian Jamison came to possess a rare and intricate Tajik teahouse sounds almost too unbelievable to be true. What began as a simple clean-up job evolved into a decades-long mystery.
City Lifestyle reports that years ago, Jamison was hired to clear debris from a property after a couple’s divorce. Among the clutter in a barn, he and his crew stumbled upon stacks of wooden crates buried beneath a “mountain of trash.” The property owners dismissed the crates as useless, abandoned junk. But Jamison, ever curious, decided to open them. Inside, he found pieces of what appeared to be an ornate, hand-carved teahouse.
Instead of following the owner's advice to scrap the crates, Jamison carefully loaded them onto trailers. Over the next decade, the crates were moved from one farm in Maryland to another, all the while Jamison didn’t fully understand the significance of what he had uncovered.
"Last year, I decided to take a closer look," Jamison recalled. His curiosity led him to Nate Jones, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a board member of Boulder’s Sister Cities of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Jones had co-authored a book about the Dushanbe-Boulder Teahouse, a gift from Tajikistan to the United States in the late 1980s as a symbol of peace and friendship. The teahouse had been built by Tajik artisans, and it quickly became a local landmark.
Jamison purchased the book and reached out to Jones directly, sparking an unexpected chain of events. Intrigued by the possibility, Jones and his co-author, Kate Sector, traveled to Maryland to examine the crates firsthand. Upon arrival, they confirmed an astonishing truth: The crates contained pieces of another Tajik teahouse, crafted by the same artisans who built the one in Boulder.
How the second teahouse ended up in Maryland remains a mystery. The previous barn owner recalled a man named “Izat” who had brought the crates to the barn and then disappeared without a trace. Interestingly, some who were involved with the Boulder teahouse recall a man named Izatullo Khoshmukhamedov, whose name is etched on a plaque inside the Boulder teahouse, mentioning plans to build a similar structure in Maryland decades ago. The exact circumstances surrounding the Maryland teahouse’s journey to the U.S. remain unclear.
For now, the teahouse remains boxed up in two trailers, filled with massive, vividly painted panels. Jones has proposed involving University of Colorado students in digitally scanning and reconstructing the structure, potentially paving the way for its physical restoration, as no existing blueprints or plans are available.
For Jamison, who has spent years safeguarding the crates, the dream is to see the teahouse restored and displayed as a cultural and architectural monument. “It would be amazing to bring it to life,” he says. “It deserves to be seen.”
The same artisans who created Boulder’s iconic teahouse were behind this mysterious structure, and now, decades later, their craftsmanship may soon find a new home in Maryland, bridging the gap between Tajikistan, Boulder, and the United States.
