A new Burton shop sells beautiful things one day a week

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 9, 2026

The building is the color of a creamsicle, wedged into a short block across from the Burton Coffee Stand, facing the sea.

On Saturdays, when the door swings open, you might find a Persian rug from the 1870s rolled out next to a cobalt blue vase thrown by a neighbor, a botanically dyed silk scarf, a candle that smells like a forest floor, and a chunky gold telephone from the 1960s that started it all.

The shop is called Landline.

“I think we’re all thinking about real connection and being offline,” said Katelyn Norris, who opened the hybrid gallery and shop this month after moving to Vashon last September. “And the phone is gorgeous and cool. It deserved to be commemorated.”

That telephone — discovered at an estate sale, heavy and golden — gave the business its name before there was even a business to name. For years, Norris had been operating under the Landline moniker as an art consultant, working with small businesses in the design world, mostly remotely.

It’s open Saturdays, noon to five. Or, as Norris puts it on her hand-distributed materials: “or when the door is open.”

Norris grew up in rural New Jersey and spent nine years in Seattle, where she served as the director of Koplin Del Rio Gallery, an art gallery with a brick-and-mortar presence in the Georgetown neighborhood. But she says she knew, almost from the moment she arrived in the Pacific Northwest, that Vashon was where she wanted to land.

She came to know the island the long way. On her Seattle-to-Tacoma commute, she would regularly opt to take the slower, pricier route that wound through Vashon on a ferry. “It’s ridiculous,” she said, laughing.

What drew her wasn’t just the scenery but the pace, the backroads, the idiosyncrasies of small-town life and — she mentioned more than once — the “killer” produce.

Rural Vashon, with its farm stands and windy roads, felt like the New Jersey countryside she grew up in. “It felt like coming home,” she said.

Opening a physical space was, in part, a remedy for the isolation of remote work. Working mostly alone, consulting from screens, Norris craved more face-to-face contact — with islanders, with makers, with people who care about beautiful objects.

Landline became the answer: one day a week, she surrounds herself with things she loves and invites the neighborhood in.

Inside, the shop is small and carefully arranged, full of what Norris calls “beautiful objects of all different varieties.” Antique rugs in muted jewel tones share the floor with local pottery, some of it made by Heidi Anderson, whose studio sits kitty-corner to Landline, and some by Court Walker, another island ceramicist. Vintage jewelry gleams in a small case. Woodsy soaps and candles line a shelf. A zine collection is growing.

The building itself has a layered past. It has housed, at various times, a fireplace store, a barbershop, a flower shop, and a consignment store. Anderson ran a beloved shop and hosted pop-up events in the space before Norris arrived; in the interim it served as a studio and office.

Norris describes Landline as an “experiment” — undefined, evolving, responsive to what islanders actually want. But underneath the looseness is a clear sensibility: craft, history, quality, things made by hand or with intention. “I’m really passionate about art and objects,” she said. “So when this opportunity came up, I just decided to make it work.”

“It’s pretty idyllic,” she said, glancing around the shop. “The sea right there is worth it alone.”

The shop’s first gallery show is already scheduled. On June 27, from 5 to 7 p.m., Landline will host an opening reception for an exhibition called “Heartburn” — a show, Norris explains, about heartbreak in all its forms.

“Whether romantic or political, we all experience it,” she said. “Is it a blessing or a curse? That’s the question.” For the show, the rugs and objects will move downstairs, and the walls will fill with art.

Norris, who has a background in fine arts, sees Landline as a small but meaningful addition to Vashon’s already active arts scene — an outpost for the Burton neighborhood, tucked into a creamsicle building, open when the door is open.

Those who want to know when that is can join her mailing list — the old-fashioned kind, the kind that sends things to a mailbox instead of an inbox. An actual working landline phone number is forthcoming.

For a shop named after an analog object, in a town she found by taking the long way around, the approach seems fitting.

Landline is open Saturdays noon to 5 p.m. in Burton. The opening reception for Heartburn is Saturday, June 27, 5–7 p.m.