Solvig Baas-Becking AM

“You have lots of options in your life: it’s the directions in which you move, the choices you make and the way you combine things that will end up as your completed life.”

Solvig Baas Becking made that statement as a metaphor for the way a weaver chooses a particular technique and particular colours and yarns to create a weaving of which the final imagery and structure are essentially dictated by those choices.

It is a philosophy that is elemental to her as a weaver, and its metaphor is equally valid to Baas Becking’s life as a weaver – beginning in 1947 when she decided to stop studying languages at university in Holland and go to Sweden to study weaving.

Solvig Baas Becking is one of Australia’s most distinguished craftspeople, with works in public and private national and international collections. Since the 1960s she has made a major contribution to craft practice and education in her adopted country. Solvig was instrumental in the development of a new craft ethos in Australia.

She was a founder of the Canberra Spinners and Weavers and served as its President. She was also a founding member of the Crafts Council of the ACT (now CraftACT) and Vice President of Craft Australia.

In addition she served on what was then the Crafts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Together with Erica Semie, Solvig instigated the original meeting in Mittagong of what became Fibre Forum. Furthermore, she was on the working party to set up the Canberra School of Art and was for many years a Council Member of the School.

In the 1970s Solvig moved to Half Moon at Mogarlowe near Braidwood – a move that increased her environmental awareness and impacted on her work.

Here she was a founding member and source of enthusiasm and encouragement to what became the ‘Braidwood Group’. Here she worked and exhibited with members of other craft disciplines – Christoph Altenburg, silversmith, Richard Murray, potter, and others, in an atmosphere of collegial respect.

Her lifetime of service to craft in Australia was recognised with the award of the Order of Australia Medal in 2003.

Solvig Baas Becking remains a source of enthusiasm, encouragement and support to the arts community of the Braidwood region.

Today she is the respected, admired and loved Patron of Braidwood Regional Arts Group. 

On Heritage Day, 10 March 2007, at Ryrie Park weaving demonstration