Charlotte Bronte And Awakening

This past week I had the rare privilege of crossing the Atlantic to visit a dear friend in the UK—and boy do I wish I'd brought a warmer coat. Nothing goes through you like a Yorkshire wind. Of course my other objective was to finally see Radiohead play live in London. The trip took an even more memorable turn when we made a pilgrimage to Haworth, the wild, wind-bitten village where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote, and to the small stone church where their father was vicar in the 1840s and 50s.

I’ve always felt that Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is as much a story of fierce redemption as it is one of romance. Toward the end of the novel, when the blinded Rochester tells Jane that hearing her voice again feels like a dream he’s afraid to believe in, she answers with these electrifying words:

“I am no dream. Then awaken.”

That line has stayed with me for years. It feels like a call—not just to Rochester, but to anyone half-asleep to their own life—to open their eyes and truly see.

That same call guides everything we do at Burton Goods.

We don’t only want to design items that protects your devices and looks good doing it. We want to awaken something in you. When you slide one of our pieces out of its home delivered box, we hope there’s a small, involuntary intake of breath—the same one you feel when you turn a corner and suddenly see the moors stretch out under a Yorkshire sky.

Precision, craftsmanship, restraint, surprise: these aren’t checkboxes for us. They’re the means by which we try to say, gently but unmistakably, “Awaken.”

Thank you for letting us be part of that moment for you.

Happy Holidays!

Brian Holmes

Founder

BurtonGoods.com