About GARD

GARD Bags is an important and thriving segment of the Talwar company (Talwar Brothers Pvt. Ltd), a family business, now in our third generation. Our R&D and Design center, our state-of-the-art production facilities, and our management operations are centered in Kolkata, situated on the eastern coast of India.

A Brief History

Balraj Talwar migrated to Kolkata in 1943 after the partition of India. He borrowed money to start a business in timber that was in short supply after World War II. As the business grew, he enlisted his brothers to help him manage it, and Talwar Brothers was officially launched in 1948.

Fourteen years later, Balraj’s eldest son, Vijay Talwar, enrolled at the University of Hamburg, Germany, eventually earning a Master’s degree in wood technology to help grow the business. He returned to India in 1967 and guided Talwar Brothers to become the first company to export ebony from India using his newly acquired technical knowledge.

In the early 90s, recorder maker Moeck Blockfloetenbau und Verlag, a longtime Talwar ebony customer, asked Vijay to make a cotton bag for its recorders. One year and 178 samples later, Moeck submitted an order, and Talwar Brothers had made its first foray into musical instrument bags.

After exhibiting recorder bags at the Frankfurt Musikmesse, the company was approached by Normans Musical Instruments in the U.K. to make bags for its brass and woodwind instruments. Talwar’s GARD Bags was born in 1995, with its logo—a mother kangaroo with a baby in her pouch—representing how GARD bags protect the instrument with the same care that a mother gives her child.