Bernhard Bart Profile

In 1947, I was born in Bern, Switzerland, and 1969 I finished my education with a diploma in architecture. Then I worked many years as architect in Switzerland.

Together with my wife Erika, we also like to travel and have seen many parts of the world, especially in Asia. Wherever we go, I am always fascinated by the different traditional handicrafts.

When I stayed in West Sumatra in 1996, I started researching Minangkabau songket and then songket from Palembang as well as from Aceh. This research is continuing today. Currently, I am documenting songket patterns from these areas and have a collection of more than 2000 photographs of different old songket textiles. I find songket designs fascinating, but I am more interested in the technical aspects of weaving and in the looms.

In 2008, I designed and built a house in Batu Taba near Bukittinggi in West Sumatra, and we founded a songket weaving studio, intending to conserve the highest quality songket weavings. The studio focuses primarily on recreating the traditional silk and metallic Minangkabau songkets. We do a lot of research to make as closest a reproduction as possible, both design and quality.

Our studio gradually became successful. In November 2012, two of our shoulder cloths received a UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handicrafts, South-East Asia. We held twice exhibitions in Jakarta (2006 Cemara6Galeri, and 2011 Bentera Budaya). In addition, we participated in exhibitions in Jakarta (2014 Museum Tekstil) and Kuala Lumpur (2016 National Museum of Malaysia). I also curated two exhibitions in Switzerland of songkets produced by our studio.
2018 at Kulturort Garnlager in Lyssach and - on invitation and in collaboration with the Indonesian Embassy - 2024 in Bern

I have published a few articles about our weaving studio and the textile patterns on some stone statues from the Singasari and the Majapahit Kingdom in East Java. I have also been invited by several institutions in Jakarta, Bangkok, Zuerich, London, Oxford, Hangzhou, Leiden, and Singapore to talk about songkets and my work.

My goal is to keep the traditional handicraft of songket weaving alive. I hope that more younger people are interested in hand weaving and will adapt the craft to modern times while still maintaining the high quality of songkets of earlier times.