Laurel Burch - Background

Background

Laurel Anne Harte was born in the San Fernando Valley on New Year's Eve, 1945. She grew up in a broken home and left at age 14 with only a paper bag of clothing. She supported herself by working as a cook, house cleaner and baby-sitter in San Francisco.

She married a jazz musician, Robert Burch, when she was 19 years old and was a divorced mother of two children by the time she was 20. Her second marriage, to Jack Holton, also ended in divorce.

She began making jewelry and selling it on the streets of San Francisco from tackle boxes. Some local stores began stocking her creations, and a businessman, Shashi Singapuri, took samples of her work to China. She went to China in 1971 and discovered cloisonné, a kind of enamel work, with which she designed paintings and had the designs made into earrings.

With Mr. Singapuri's financial backing manufacturing began. Burch went on to work on cast metals and wood, and to include spinoff products on paper, porcelain and fabric. In 1979 she split with Singapuri, and started Laurel Burch Inc. She was president and chief designer. In the 1990s she licensed her designs to a dozen or so companies that now make and distribute her creations worldwide.

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