Jewelry designer Didi Suydam models a leaf necklace of 18-carat gold and sterling silver at her gallery on Bannister’s Wharf in Newport.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

PROVIDENCE — The Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America will hold its annual trade show in the city Sept. 17-18 at the Rhode Island Convention Center — the third meeting since the event was reprised in 2006.

Its offerings continue to evolve as the association adjusts to changes in the region’s jewelry industry.

“A new show tends to define itself,” said Bruce Coltin, the association’s trade-show sales manager. “It doesn’t always turn out what you expect it to be.”

MJSA hosts shows and training sessions for industry members and represents the industry on trade matters and legislative issues. The association represents more than 1,900 jewelry companies around the country.

The group once held trade shows in Providence focused on major jewelry manufacturers and retailers — companies that wrote sales orders that ran into the tens of thousands of jewelry pieces or committed them to large-scale sales of manufacturing equipment and supplies.

The association stopped hosting the Providence show because much of the state’s jewelry manufacturing had moved overseas.

However, since the disappearance of those big factory operations, a state and region teaming with individual jewelry designers and small-scale manufacturers has developed.

In 2006, Coltin and others at MJSA predicted that a revived show would draw a mix of large companies and individual designers. But large vendors who attended didn’t generate the big orders they once had. Attendees bought goods or ordered them at the show, but just not in the size that marked the old show.

“The companies who were looking for the old-style Providence show didn’t find it here,” he said. “The show has defined itself as being for the small, individual jewelry maker.”

That’s the case for Didi Suydam, a Newport jewelry designer, who has attended the show each year since its revival.

“I’m not a big machine person, so I wouldn’t be buying huge technology,” said Suydam, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who now runs a jewelry and fine arts store on Bannister’s Wharf in Newport.

Besides seeing what products vendors have to offer, the jewelry makers who attend the show want demonstrations and training about new design techniques. The orders come after the show, when attendees have figured out how they’ll apply what they’ve learned in Providence.

“[Attendees] really use it as an education source,” Coltin said.

At the show, the job of Corrie Silvia, an MJSA sales associate, has been to attract vendors willing to actively display their wares.

“You’ll be able to see a lot of jewelry processes right in the booth,” she said.

There also will be a range of large seminars, including sessions on designing with beads, chain making, lost-wax glass casting, soldering, using “metal” clay and others.

Suydam said she likes being able to see new techniques up close, without getting jostled in the crowds at larger shows she attends. She also goes to buy stones and other material to use in her own designs.

“I just find it really refreshing; it’s really low-key,” she said.

The MJSA show is open to those who make and sell jewelry and other craft items. Attendance is free to those who register in advance, or $10 at the door.

For more information about the Trade Show for Jewelry Making, contact the association at (800) 444-6572, (401) 274-3840, or visit mjsa.org

pgrimald@projo.com