The Portuguese brand Burel Factory arises from the need to save a heritage
Burel Factory is a Portuguese brand born in Serra da Estrela and arises from a heritage recovery project, which gave a new history to the region's wool industry
When revitalizing burel, ancestral fabric used by mountain shepherds, making it synonymous with color, design, creativity and responsibility and art, the Portuguese brand Burel Factory ensures that today's burel continues to be woven on ancestral looms, ensuring greater quality in finishing and authenticity in its secular origins.
history
It all started in 2006, when Isabel Costa and João Tomás discovered the old sanatorium in Penhas Douradas during their walks through Serra da Estrela. They recovered it and today it is the Hotel das Penhas Douradas.
In the process of revitalizing the building, always looked for elements that demonstrated local craftsmanship, and discovered the Império Wool Factory, where burel was worked since 1947, at a time of insolvency and without the ability to adapt to the modern world recurring to the financial crisis 2008. They then decided to move forward with the factory's recovery process and continue their narrative. Maintained machines in the 19th century, recycled some old patterns from drawing books that they still use, put the old loom masters to teach the younger ones, and gave color to the burel, which until then only existed in the original wool colors. Em 2012 they were already the Burel Factory brand.
After Isabel and João showed the product to designers and creatives, elevated him and valued him, made it become synonymous with creation. They highlighted their innovation by focusing on training and the practice of passing on testimony so that the art of hands does not die, and the ancient sound of the looms continued to echo through the mountain valleys.
They maintained their objective and went further. They saved an industrial heritage and a tradition rooted in village life and guaranteed jobs, the transmission of knowledge of wool crafts to new generations, increasing social sustainability, ecological and conservation of the mountain and the people who inhabit it.
All the brand's inspiration wanders through the nature that surrounds them, the grandeur of the mountainous landscape, the sheep that roam it, and from whom the wool is borrowed twice a year, the shepherds who care for and lead them and of course, the qualified workforce they attract to the region, and spreads the talent and care they apply to each piece they weave.
THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SAW AND THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
Burel Factory promotes a story that belongs to many and can be achieved today, the largest employer in Vila de Manteigas. Em 2016 the duo acquires the old Pousada de São Lourenço to transform it into the new Casa de São Lourenço hotel, which with its charm maintains the continuity of the dynamism of the central region, highlighting a lifestyle linked to the mountains, to your culture, to your people, and the knowledge inherited through generations. Isabel and João are asset recoverers, material and immaterial with an innovative look focused on a future with a past, that makes art progress, in a tradition in the processing of wool.
When shepherds send wool to the factory in 200kg bales, Arrives already washed of dust and natural grease, but very dense and compact.
Even though washed, may contain some straw residue that escaped during the processing process and may remain in a blanket, cushion or other brand products, for your home and which reinforces the natural touch. The bales enter a machine that opens the fibers and mixes the colors at the same time, that softens her. After, it rests in the chambers and begins to be carded. As cardas, machines with 100 years, they will merge the fibers in order to obtain uniformity in color and texture and later create the strand, which is not yarn and is subsequently placed in the spinning mill in different thicknesses depending on the final objective and the type of fabric intended., be the burel fabric, belongings, flannel or other fabrics. The straws that come out of the cardboard wiring, are passed to reels (on the winder) and some of these coils are passed to shins (on the shin guard). It is the moment of weaving and passing the bobbins and shin guards to the looms that transform them into xerga.
The xerga when it leaves the loom is weighed and measured, and goes to quality control, where wire pickers or threaders, in daylight or artificial, sweep the fabric with their eyes and cut out knots or threads that may have a different thickness. Then the ladies sat, with a needle and thread, remove this different piece of wire and place another of the same thickness. Then the finalization process takes place, the so-called miracle of the textile industry, that transforms the xerga into the final fabric, with the softness, the color and resistance we see in clothing fabrics, decoration, upholstery and architecture.
The finalization is several processes that stabilize the tissue, which varies depending on what you want in the end. Only after this long and meticulous process, the burel we know appears.
CREATIVITY AND DESIGN by burel factory
The Creative Center is the space in the Burel Factory factory dedicated to creation, to innovation and thinking for a future woven with wool and full of stories from the past. And for thinking creatively, with dynamics of doing and experimentation, the team that produces culture, reinforces and develops the identity of a region based on a green economy that seeks to have zero waste. Developing partnerships with artists, designers and associations in order to innovate in the use and valorization of wool, Burel Factory seeks to develop a large part of its products from waste, resulting in unique and conscious pieces, lowest possible ecological impact.
Today, Burel Factory and its sub-brand Lanifícios Império, exclusive of clothing fabrics,, (flannel, meltons, tartans, curly, tweeds and many others) create products aimed at fashion and accessories, with some already being part of creators' collections and others destined for interior architecture, because burel is ideal for applying to internal coverings and expands the operations of this Portuguese brand.
If Burel Factory's unique fabrics give rise to equally unique pieces in a universal context, in interior design they give each space that perfect touch in the search for acoustic comfort, thermal and visual.
Burel Factory performs various covering solutions – wall panels, bed headboards, wallpapers, curtains, made-to-measure and personalized partitions, giving them a unique identity, highlighted by a wide range of 3D Points, Textures and Colors. All wall solutions, ceilings, curtains and carpets are worked manually, in burel 100% wool that is fire resistant, has a high degree of impermeability (water resistant), It is a thermal and acoustic insulator, with a highly innovative design and high aesthetic impact.
Burel Factory asserts its versatility, resistance, color and texture in a History woven between mountains, entrepreneurship and design and thus conquers all continents of the world.
To see all of its stores, click Burel Chiado and Burel Interiors and Burel Porto.