Please could you suggest some jewellery designers whose approaches can be compared and contrasted?

One way to approach this question is to look at the
different styles of jewelry designers in terms of their
inspirations.

Perhaps it might be worth comparing a strong
Pacific Northwestern jewelry designer like Paul Wagner, with a more abstract jewelry
designer with a strong art studio background like Beth
Adams.

Wagner uses imagery and symbols that have distinctly
native pacific northwestern themes. We see patterns that are reminiscent of totems. We
see frogs, crows or ravens, wolves, the sun and the moon. His representational strokes
are fluid and loose, yet the material (often silver) is sturdy and heavy. There is a
weightiness to the final product.

Beth Adams, on the other
hand, is less interested in representational symbols and much more interested in finding
that abstract aesthetic that you can also see in her studio artwork. We see fluid lines
and suggested forms, but the result is airy and quite
light.

Another approach might be to look at jewelry from
certain areas in the world. It would be easy to compare a Pacific Northwestern jewelry
artist with a Celtic jewelry artist in terms of symbolism and inspiration from the
mythos of their culture. Yet, it would be easy to contrast them as well, in terms of
materials, patterns, focus of symbolism, and purpose of the
item.

Or, perhaps, you could compare and contrast styles
even within the Native American jewelry design world. Southwestern materials and symbols
are quite different from the Pacific Northwestern example we looked at
above.