Shop Talk: The Index

A YEAR AFTER Homespun: Modern Handmade closed on Mass Ave, owner Amanda Mauer is again selling small-batch goods with Hoosier heart, including illustrated city and state maps, checkered flag purse straps, and everyone’s favorite shirt (“Indiana born and breaded”). She’s posted up at The Index, the new visitor center and gift shop located in Pan Am Tower. The Index breaks the tourist trap mold with homegrown products, like Tremolo Hand Built purse straps by Cara Wahlers, Pup & the Pepper hot sauce (get the peach habanero on the way to a Colts tailgate), and decadent B. Happy Peanut Butter, a Zionsville family’s project. Even locals appreciate the museum merch, including L.S. Ayres cookbooks and ornaments from the Indiana History Center, contemporary buffalo-print hoodies from the Eiteljorg, and thick-knit stuffies from The Children’s Museum. The Index is slicker than the visitor center that occupied the spot in the 1990s, which held a giant Indianapolis diorama. But it nods to it with its own installation, a sculptural red oak tree.