Laurel Burch

Laurel Burch (December 31, 1945 – September 13, 2007) was an American artist, designer and businesswoman.

As a 20-year-old single mother she found metal in junkyards to hammer into jewelry to support her two children, and went on to launch her business, now called Laurel Burch Artworks, in the late 1960s with the help of a small staff that worked out of her house. She began making paintings and was commissioned by restaurants, businesses and private collectors. "I found metal in a junkyard and hammered it out on the back of an old frying pan", she stated during an interview with the Marin Independent Journal in 2005.

Burch designed, among other things, beads, jewelry, paintings, T-shirts, scarves, coffee mugs and tote bags, but 90% of her designs derived from her original paintings.

She died on September 13, 2007, aged 61, at her home in Novato, California from complications of osteopetrosis, a painful bone disease she had her entire life, suffering more than 100 bone fractures as a result. In addition to her third husband, Rick Sara, she is survived by a daughter, a son, and two granddaughters.