Bernhard Bart came to West Sumatra, Indonesia, in 1996, to learn the language. Travelling pretty extensively in this region he soon noticed the decline in all kinds of handicrafts, especially in the weaving of songket, which was once flourishing. He decided that something had to be done to keep the knowledge of this traditional handicraft alive and wanted to prove that it is still possible to weave songkets of the same high quality as in the past.

He started researching and exploring Minangkabau songket and later songket from all of Sumatra. This research still continues today. He is documenting songket patterns and has a collection of photographs of more than 2000 different old songket textiles. He began to work with three weavers in the region to put his findings into practice and to experiment with looms, threads and patterns.

Bernhard decided to build a house with adjacent weaving studio so that everything necessary to produce a songket textile can be done under one roof. According to his own designs, this was realised in 2008, in Batu Taba, a village not far from the town of Bukittinggi, in the highlands of West Sumatra, in the district of Agam which was once a flourishing weaving centre.

The studio gradually became successful. In November 2012, two of its shoulder cloths received a UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handicrafts, South-East Asia. Twice it put on an exhibition in Jakarta (2006 Cemara6Galeri, and 2011 BenteraBudaya). In addition, it participated in exhibitions in Jakarta (2014 Museum Tekstil) and Kuala Lumpur (2016 National Museum of Malaysia). In its efforts to make Songket more fashionable the studio got support through the Indonesian fashion designer Adrian Gan who used its songkets to create his new collection “Eloquence of the Eighties” for a fashion show in Jakarta, in May 2016. Finally, in 2018, Bernhard curated an exhibit in Switzerland (Kulturort Garnlager Lyssach) on songket produced by his studio.

For more information about these exhibitions please see under events.

In the course of time, the Indonesian partners changed, and therefore the name of the weaving studio as well: Erika Rianti (2005-2012), Sumatera Loom (2013-2015), palantaloom (2016-2022), and since 2023 it is named PT. Songket Bernhard Bart. Independent now, Bernhard runs the studio as he did before, thus ensuring that his work continues, still with the same gaol as in the beginning: to cultivate and preserve the traditional songket weaving.