In the early 1980s, Donna De Garcia drove through the mountainside of Taxco, Mexico, searching for her vision of gold — silver.

She was visiting a family business in the silver capital of country with a mission: to begin her own, exporting jewelry made in Mexico to the United States. Drawn to the big and bold contemporary style, De Garcia also had a love for Mexico, a country she had lived in off and on in since her college days of studying at a local university.

She bought $1,000 worth of silver jewelry and hit the road, seeing success selling to fashion boutiques and department stores in the U.S.

Years later, the same family she met in Taxco offered to give her enough jewelry upfront to open up her own store. De Garcia and her then-husband opened a little store on Main Street in Annapolis in 1991. They chose the state capital since they had good friends who lived there, and thought it was a pretty place.

They called it “Blanca Flor,” or white flower, named for the calla lily featured in Mexican folk art and after a property dear to their hearts.

Now, 34 years later, the jewelry store is based out of a bigger storefront down the street and has a collection beyond strictly silver Mexican pieces. Yet the pieces make sense together, said De Garcia, 72. It is a gallery of silver from across the world, combined with gold tones and stones.

All the decorative parts of the store — the tiled mirrors on the wall and the pottery on the tables — are from Mexico. De Garcia’s daughter Sofia, 35, took over the business after she finished college, enabling her mother to travel when she’s not in Annapolis.

Why were you really attracted to the idea of running your own business?

I have always worked more for myself. So I enjoyed that kind of thing — we even invented a business of making terrariums one time when we were living in Mexico, and rented a house, bought a jeep and lived from doing that.

My ex-husband was working as a photographer for public television in Mexico, and his job had just ended. I met those women — the man I was working with wasn’t really giving me a lot to do — I saw that jewelry, and I just had a really strong feeling that this was going to work.

What’s something that you wish people knew about your business?

It is not a typical jewelry store; it is really very selected by my daughter and I. We’ve carried all kinds of jewelry on top of a really extensive, nice, heavy sterling silver jewelry made in Mexico.

There is not a piece of jewelry in there that my daughter and I did not pick out. She’s been around it for so many years that when a vendor comes in to see us and he’s showing us the samples we’re picking out exactly the same things.

We’re like, “That one!” We come out with the same word at the same time.

Do you have a next, or biggest, ambition?

I know our next step is to do more online sales, but to keep the storefront.

Sofia might someday want to design more of the jewelry. We have people that can make it for us. We just haven’t had time, running the business.

What’s your favorite part of a day in the store?

I personally like to sell and buy. So at this point, I don’t want to do anything that has to do with payroll or scheduling. If there’s something for me to do in the store, or if it’s busy, I’ll stay in and work for a while. I like to work when it’s busy and talk to people.

And I love buying. I used to do a lot of the buying at the shows in New York. After the pandemic, people started putting things in catalogs and online. And shows are really expensive, so it’s not like it used to be. But I did go for years, and I made really great friends in the industry who I’m still friends with.

I love going to buy jewelry from the Navajo. I love Mexico, and I love going to the small town where they make all the silver jewelry. I know the grandfather and then the mother and then the grown-up daughter — generations of people there.

What’s doing business like in Annapolis?

In Annapolis you have the possibility of having local customers and tourists, and repeat customers. You have a lot of people that are coming to the city for other reasons, like the sailors or just day visitors. It’s a beautiful town.

There are times when business just isn’t as good as other times. You just have to not lower your standards, continue to sell really nice things, so people know they can come back and it’s still going to be really great jewelry.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.