KRT Hardjonagoro (Go Tik Swan) had the best taste in Java, and the sharpest tongue. A feisty Chinese, born into an elite family―his grandfather was the town’s opium lord; his father built Solo’s Pasar Harjonagoro―the young Go Tik Swan studied classical Javanese dance at the Kraton Susuhunan (or the “Palace of the Susuhunan”). From a young age he was a close personal friend of the ruler’s son, the future Pakubuwono XII.
As a young man he started a batik work shop which became Solo’s finest―his textiles were always exquisitely designed and often highly original. He pioneered the use of bright colours in classical Javanese batik designs.
During the Soekarno Era he supplied the palace ladies with their batiks, and the palace men with pats on the bottoms.
In 1969 he was asked by Pakubuwono XII to found a palace museum: it quickly grew―through Harjonegoro’s great erudition, and knowledge of the palace’s history―into the finest in Java.
Over the years, Hardjonagoro became the pointman for scholars of Central Java, Javanese mysticism (he was an intensely spiritual man in a very elegant Javanese way, and held the key to many secrets) and Keris-making (his Keris foundation, started by his adopted son Kanjeng Warno, produced some of the fine keris, using the 100% traditional methods and ceremonies).
Amongst all of his achievements, ‘Mas Go’, (as he was known, affectionately, by all his friends) will be most remembered for the sirenely elegant, classically Javanese multi-courtyard house and garden he created behind the superb Dutch Art Deco Bungalow on Solo’s Jalan Kratonan. At various times Raffles’ Gamelan, the Bima statue from Candi Sukuh, and many other cultural treasures were political-cultural refugees in his house.
The famed Jogyakarta architect-priest Romo Mangunwijaya had created a 1960s modernist-ethnic’ go-down in one corner of the Zen-like courts; and an ivory and gold Javanese pendopo pavilion, with a few of the best statues from Javanese antiquity, held down another court nearby.Everything was simple and sirene, except Mas Go holding court at his marble dining table. Ha!
It was his glorious irreverence, interpretations of the classics and secret story-telling (Ningrat-gossip) that will be missed.
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6 November 2008
KRT Harjonagoro died quietly yesterday, at home, as he wished.
Today the courtyard is full of friends and family and nobles from Solo’s palaces, and representatives from Jakarta’s cultural elite.
Prince Mangkunegaran IX is here as are princes from the Kraton and hundreds of other Solonese in traditional dress. Soedarmadji Damais is the sole representative from the close Jakarta friends of Mas Go (who has been elevated to Pengabehan on his death, it transpires).
The ceremonies at the house and the graveyard are solemn and serene: the umbrella Mas Go designed for his funeral―drop-dead chic Aman― approvable white on caramel―is the final symbol of his extraordinary taste and neo-royal status within Solonese cultural society.
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