1052 – Smithy from Bümpliz, Berne, 19th Century

This blacksmith’s workshop in the style of a farmhouse was built between 1850 and 1900: big doors, green-painted half-timber, galleries and wide eaves. A craftsman’s workshop at the transition to industrial business was hidden behind the rural facade: the village smithy from Bümpliz (near Berne) is more than a simple farrier’s shed and was equipped with the latest machinery: thread cutters, grinders and drill presses. These were driven by the same belts, shafts and pulleys that drove the big forging hammer. The power came from an electric motor. Part of the equipment comes from another smithy in Interlaken, but originals from the Bümpliz smithy form the greater part.

Horses were shod under the long roof before the house. In the rear of the smithy, whose heart was the great forge, there was once a saddlery. The external stairway to the two upper stories leads to a change in scenery: out of the smoke and heat of the workshop into a living zone with a bourgeois parlour and a well-appointed kitchen in the tone of the times.