About Us

Adrienne and Howie are very excited to complete their new home in Wimberly, Texas sometime this Winter. It was designed by Adrienne.

The living room windows are based on a design she made for an enamel art piece. You can see here how art inspired life!

In 1974, Adrienne Blum was a 20 year old attending a community college taking courses in elementary education. Although her parents were helping her out, she needed extra money and took a job making rainbow enameled pins. After about six months, Adrienne had mastered the basics of enameling. Realizing that even if she got her education degree that salaries were quite low, she quit school to form a business making enamel products with a friend. Combining the friend’s first name, Mindy, with Blum they called the business In Bloom Enamels. She was lucky in that she was able to support herself in her first year. At first they just made pins but fairly soon moved into necklaces and earrings then added a line of small enameled boxes. They designed and cut their own unique shapes leading to some commercial success. They started a wholesale business and began to hire employees. In 1978, the business, which by then had expanded to three owners, moved to Grass Valley, a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada not far from Lake Tahoe. After three more years the owners all decided to seek new horizons and In Bloom ended. Adrienne began a higher-priced line of enamel on silver jewelry and soon thereafter moved with her husband to Kingston, Ontario on the shores of Lake Ontario. As an American in Canada, Adrienne was not able to pursue her craft to any great degree and was therefore very pleased to move back to the States to suburban Maryland near Washington, DC in 1984. As a resident of the Washington area, Adrienne gradually, year after year, built up her business by doing a variety of retail craft shows, mostly in the Washington area. She began with a line of what, for the time, could be called “New Wave” jewelry. It was brightly colored with clearly defined geometric patterns. After about a year she introduced a line of enameled light switch plates, which immediately sold well. Each year she would add a few new designs to the line. As time went on, she began to sell to a few stores, again mostly in the Washington area. By 1988 the business was quite successful, generating as much work as she could handle. At this point, she and her husband, Howard, decided on a major change in their lives. Howard , who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, quit his regular job as a scientist and they moved the family to Earlysville, VA near Charlottesville. Adrienne introduced a new product line – a line of enameled picture frames in a variety of styles from traditional to art deco. It was decided that the business should try to focus more on wholesale, so, to that end, Adrienne Blum Enamels did the Rosen Agency wholesale show in Pennsylvania in February, 1989. This show was extremely successful, so much so that the business was booked with orders until mid-summer. Although the business had done other wholesale shows, none was nearly so productive. This show led to many loyal customers who continue to reorder.