Around 1914, Berta Pauline Svile receives a gift - a loom made especially for her. It is an expensive gift. Later, the value of these bars only increases as each life spent on them makes the bars more expensive than gold. Life with days, minutes and moments is the most precious thing in the world. Berta spends her entire life weaving patterns, making sheets, blankets and towels. She leaves looms in the inheritance of her daughter Mary. Mary is imaginative, proud and persistent. She designs the articles herself. Weave colors and shapes together as a miraculous natural phenomenon. No war, no deportation of her husband, no hiding in a ditch full of dead bodies, where her feet are lame for life after a frostbite and infection, she is not forced to leave her trusty looms. The rest know her as Stradin 'mother, a lame gray mum whose handshake is so tight and firm that she's uncomfortable. Mary is leaving, the legacy is almost gone because no one is interested in the low, old looms. Exactly ten years after Mary Stradyn's departure to Welsh, the looms come to her grandson. Thanks to Vidzeme Planning Region, within the framework of the Vidzeme Culture Program project 2016 supported by the Latvian State Forests, funding is being found for the reconstruction of grandmother's stalls. The research and information gathering phase begins, it turns out that there is no loom maker in Latvia who makes looms for hand tools. What's more, there is no real Latvian wireframe trainer to go to for training. There is an old man who can only help with advice and then only in the mechanism of Soviet-made looms. You have to learn by yourself. A lot of information comes from museum visits, information from books published in the Soviet era, but most of all, the apprenticeship childhood in the kitchen of a stray mother-in-law between the looms that grandmother weaves and the bread that had just been removed from the maple leaves.

The loom is a sophisticated masterpiece because it contains wood and metal details. You have to learn how to make both. The project took four months. The end result can truly delight!

Authentic Bertha Svile looms are made at the Lauter Culture House in Arona Parish, Madona. They are given to the people of Arona Parish for the weaving life to continue, as the days, hours and times are the most precious we have.

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