In the meantime, we have actually been up to quite a lot. I was out of the office for a week; I headed east to Providence, Rhode Island, to attend the second annual MJSA Trade Show for Jewelry Making. The MJSA (also known as the Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America) have been running a larger show in New York for years; that show has always been geared toward more toward large-scale jewelry manufacturers than individual artisans. The Providence show is their foray into events for jewelers on every level. And judging by the booths that were the most crowded, the individual artisans were doing a lot of buying.

There were some great speakers at the show, as well. While I didn't have a chance to catch all of them — or even most of them (I had to spend time on the show floor, of course!) — I did manage to catch Cynthia Eid talking introducing a new crowd to Argentium Sterling Silver, and Chris Ploof talking about the business side of jewelry making, including marketing and pricing your work. 

Providence is a wonderful city, and a great place for the show. As well as MJSA's home base, it's also home to the Rhode Island School of Design, and the town is a strange and wonderful mix of traditional New England colonial architecture (for this Philly girl, those bumpy brick sidewalks were just like coming home!) and an enthusiastic appreciation for adventurous, cutting-edge design. I rounded out the trip with a drive out to Waltham, Massachusetts, where I was given a tour of Metalwerx, a school that I've been familiar with for years by reputation, but had never seen in person. I remember seeing the first press releases about classes under that name — and here they are, two locations later, getting ready for their 10th anniversary. (I feel so old!) The school's founder, Karen Christians, took me around personally, and then we had a lovely lunch (Thai food, yum!) and talked jewelry for two hours straight. All in all, a great trip.