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Four young people transformed scraps of burel and other woollen waste from the Burel Factory and Ecolã companies into fashion and textile art pieces as part of the Lãnd Wool Innovation Week artist residencies. The work was on display at Fábrica do Rio last weekend.
Susana Cereja became involved in Ecolã and ended up using two types of waste for her creations: small scraps of burel and pure wool. “I’d been wanting to work with pure wool for a long time, so what I did was to take the dead fibres (the remains of combing the wool) and try to bring the fibres back together through wet felting,” she explained. With a special needle, Susana managed to sculpt different figures, including a hand and a fetus, which convey the idea of rebirth. She also used pieces of burel fabric that, when boiled, resembled a snake or a watercourse, which also renew themselves. “It was a challenge to work with new techniques, as I mainly come from working with Arraiolos tapestry.”
Carolina Batalha got acquainted with the waste from the Burel Factory. The initial idea was to explore the checkerboard, use it as a pixel and take advantage of the colours, but the end result, for the sake of time, went in the direction of a braid with the fringes of the looms. “Braids are a gesture of care, so I took all the fringes and started braiding,” she explained. To give the piece a greater impact, she increased its scale, and it became a suspended textile structure in which visitors can pass through its threads.
João Xará, on the other hand, was more objective in his approach to Ecolã’s waste: he began by quantifying it and using the company’s moulds to make new waistcoats with leftovers. The pieces he gathered didn’t have uniform measurements in a first test, but in a second waistcoat he used pieces of burel, all with the same shape and colour. “I did various experiments to understand colour contrasts, I removed the collar and pockets as I only had a week to finish the work,” he explained, also showing experiments with buttons and wooden cables.
Finally, Albio Nascimento presented two blankets with a ruffled effect, made with waste from Burel Fatory on the Porto Loom, which is over 100 years old. “The loom allowed me to do more things than a modern one,” he featured. The creative’s experiments were initially to apply burel according to the principles of basketry, Albio even revealed that he would like to make a cross between split wood and burel. The final pieces were made together with a company employee, who twisted the yarn for one of the blankets by hand.
