Valerie Blum

Handmade 22k gold and gem stone jewelry

Stacking Rings

Artist‘s Biography for Valerie Blum

Valerie Blum creates one-of-a-kind, hand-made jewelry objects of high quality and imagination in precious metals and vitreous enamels. For the past 15 years, she has taught goldsmithing and enameling for fine jewelry at Jewelry Arts, Inc., the nation’s premiere classical jewelry-making school. Valerie hand-fabricates jewelry by combining ancient metalsmithing practices with champlevé, plique-a-jour and cloisonné enamel, bringing the timeless techniques of the masters to life in creations that are novel yet finely wrought and enduring.

Valerie’s body of work and expertise frequently lead to requests for advice and collaboration with other master jewelers. During her career, Valerie has helped numerous artists, craftspeople and students with designing, creating and troubleshooting their enamelwork.

Her pieces have been showcased at Jewelry Arts, MADE and Fitzgerald Galleries, and juried exhibits by Ganoksin, EGNE and, most recently, The Enamelist Society’s Alchemy 7 and Champlevé Today shows. Her Moonflower Earrings won first prize in 2020’s The Art of Handmade Tahitian Pearl Design Contest. Examples of her work are on Instagram @valerieblumdesigns, @isitenamel, and @jewelryarts and jewelryarts.com

Artist‘s Statement for Valerie Blum

My enamelworks are predominantly inspired by the decorative armaments of the natural world. By combining high-carat gold and brightly colored enamel surfaces with organic forms like barbs, stingers and spikes, I seek to create beautiful objects that dazzle the viewer and express and empower the wearer.

My design process often mimics the logic of nature, with a precise framework undergirding the evolution of novel structures. I begin by inventing a set of rules and then seeing where they lead, yielding work that embodies the tension between the formal and the organic. In the end, I prefer materials that don’t behave, combinations that are unusual, and themes that are unconventional. It is where the structured meets the uncontrolled, the armored meets the vulnerable and the past meets the future that I find my greatest inspiration.