About

the designer

With a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, in Political Science and training as an illustrator from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Julie Burton, the owner and designer of Verre Modern, takes her inspiration wherever and whenever she can get it. Following a fortuitous six week class in glass blowing at RISD, she worked as a glass blower on a mountain in Tennessee before moving to New York to pursue her passion for glass at the public studio Urban Glass in Brooklyn. After concluding that production glass was not something she was interested in (she likes her table top items to be more natural and less rigid), she received a fortuitous 5 minute lesson in lamp working, a type of glass work where a torch or lamp is primarily used to melt the glass. Julie currently lives in the Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles with her husband, her son, and a revolving cast of characters made out of glass (due to limited shelf real estate, when she brings in something new, which is fairly often, items migrate to her studio downtown).

the glass

Glass is the greatest material I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with a lot: paint, wood, clay, and metal. All artistic forms have a nature all their own, but glass is special: it’s a liquid and a solid. It reacts to heat and cold. It bends to gravity and pressure and manipulation in a way that I think no other medium can do. You can draw with it. You can encapsulate in it. You can work with form, with light or a lack thereof (transparent, translucent, and opaque), and with space. The materiality of glass combined with different techniques to manipulate it provides endless inspiration and opportunities for creativity.

the ceramics

About 15 years ago I took up pottery as a hobby (I know, I know, I make things for a living and I made a hobby out of making things. It’s ridiculous). I started selling them to stores but I needed to make room on the Verre Modern website for the ceramics. Did you know that glaze, while not being exactly the same as glass, shares similar components and properties? It forms a glassy coating on ceramics when fired, and gllaze typically contains silica, which is the main glass former, along with other materials that help it bond to the clay. Similar material, different application. Close enough.