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Isabel and her husband, João Tomás, lived and worked in the Lisbon-Porto urban axis. She was the administrator of the supermarket chain Continente. He was the legal director of BCP, one of the top three Portuguese banks. They had a house in Peneda-Gerês National Park but pursued the dream of finding refuge up in the Estrela mountain chain, the highest peak of continental Portugal, in stark contrast to the rural exodus.
A dozen years ago the dream began coming to life, when they bought the ruins of Casa das Penhas Douradas, a former sanatorium (the fresh mountain air is ideal for curing tuberculosis) ravished by fire – that the couple have now turned into a five-star tourist resort with 17 rooms and a suite, going by the name of Burel Expedition Hotel.
No sooner had she moved body and mind to Manteigas, in the Estrela region, Isabel, a good practising catholic, began attending Sunday mass and blending into the local community, not taking long to realize the dramatic shattering of the village’s social fabric caused by the crisis that led to the closing of eleven wool mills that were the foundations of the region’s economy.
Isabel had changed life, but not personality, so she couldn’t stand still when faced with this depressive atmosphere, marked by hopelessness and idleness.
With the help of business consultant friends, she held a workshop on what could be done to bring Manteigas back to prosperity, in which 21 solid and sustainable projects were submitted, availing of the region’s natural resources – complete and well elaborated dossiers, with business plan and all.
An engineer, graduated from the Biotechnology School of Universidade Católica do Porto, restless and industrious, Isabel elected two of the 21 projects – the burel project, as well as a food project that gave birth to Penhas Douradas Foods (PDF), which produces and markets 54 different gourmet products (such as apple vinaigrette with ginger, pumpkin ketchup, nettle pesto or even beetroot chutney) orchestrated by chef Luís Baena.
In the meantime the couple sold PDF, to allow João to focus on the hotel business (where the company is expanding with the addition of Pousada de São Lourenço, purchased from Enatur, and renamed Burel Panorama Hotel) and Isabel to enhance her energy and creativity towards developing the burel project, which is steadfast fulfilling its initial goal of reinventing and enriching the oldest Portuguese fabric.
Handmade, since the 11th century, with the wool of sheep of the Estrela native Churra and Bordaleira breeds, burel was traditionally used by shepherds as protection against wind and cold, and was falling out of use, worn only as cloaks (the Mirandesa cloak, for example) or as an element in the garments of folk Portuguese music and dancing groups.
The odyssey of bringing burel back began in 2010, at the Lines Room of Lanifícios Império wool manufacturers, with the rescue of an industrial parking containing 19th century machinery and Porto looms (made in Portugal) earmarked for scrap-metal.
Isabel not only avoided the destruction of that parcel of our industrial History, but she also concocted a Wool Mill University of sorts, by bringing together under the roof of the Burel Factory pensioners, engineers and masters of wool manufacturing (doctorates with the accumulated knowledge of practice), uncles and nephews, grandparents, sons and grandchildren that received training at Lanifícios Império or Sotave and now work and teach new generations in a company with 21st century DNA – thus preserving a fantastic know-how, developed over the centuries, in the art of wool manufacturing.
By fusing tradition and modernity, Isabel’s company is a magnificent example of the secret underlying the second life of Portuguese garment and textile industry – the combination of traditional wisdom coupled with the permanent incorporation of design, innovation and overall new functionalities.
“Our philosophy consists of valuing what is ours, keeping alive the heritage where it is. We reinterpret burel to current standards, combining art and the knowledge of Manteigas craftsman with state-of-the-art design, creating original products and solutions with a contemporary style”, sums up Isabel, who recovered a traditional textile and gave it new colours, rejecting new densities or textures – and using it in a multitude of products.
Clothes, rucksacks, bags, benches, scarves, ascots, carpets, coatings and iPad covers are just a few of the products manufactured at the Burel Factory, who in the scope of their crusade to “live with what History gave us” (Isabel dixit), dug into the “treasure chest” of Laníficios Império and recovered old patterns that she now uses in blankets and fabrics woven into burel, tweed, houndstooth, melton or glen plaid.
The Burel Factory, in Manteigas, is a school-factory but also a living industrial museum (everyday there are guided tours in several languages) as well as a creative centre, that Isabel describes as a “space of imagination, full of stories from the past, dedicated to creation, design and innovation; where we think in a future woven in yarn, to the sound of looms and seamstresses singing”.
Everything bearing the Burel Original Mountains brand is made in Portugal in its entirety, from yarn to weaving, by the Burel Factory, drawing on traditional methods and restored machinery – only the batchwise, dyeing and finishing processes are outsourced to companies in the Estrela mountain chain region.
The architecture segment is the fastest growing in the brand’s portfolio – such as decorative pieces, fashion and accessories, blankets –, which led to the opening of a store specialized in interior decoration, in the vicinity of Cais do Sodré, in Lisbon.
The headquarters of Microsoft Portugal, the Dundo Museum (Angola), the Deloitte offices (Lisbon) and the Cidade do Futebol of the Portuguese Football Federation (Oeiras) are some of the buildings that use burel in their decoration, availing of all the unique properties of this fabric composed of 100% sheep’s wool, that provides excellent thermal and acoustic insulation, in addition to being low maintenance.
Based in Manteigas, Burel has four stores – besides the factory and the interior decoration store, it’s also open to the public in the historical city centres of Porto (Ribeira) and Lisbon (Chiado) – employing 54 people and reports a volume of business surmounting close to two million euros.