This second Wild Side book continues to explore Elena Agostinis’s fascination with artists using the ordinary in extraordinary ways. In this book, the focus is on artists who make jewellery using materials not commonly associated with traditional jewellery-making. While travelling afar, Elena’s profound realisation was that people in the most far-flung places in the world all have this powerful urge to self-adorn. Despite never having been a jeweller, what she found fascinating was that the materials used by these artists and artisans are often simply what the earth yields. She’s tried to include works that illustrate these remarkable innovations and the materials used.

The wearable artworks chosen for this book all appear to comply with this extraordinary principle. Ms. Zanella’s work and the unique creations of so many other artists included here, all follow suit. The hope is that readers, conformists and non-conformists alike, will marvel at concepts that can open all our minds and hearts to a world of colourful, wearable art, enabling us to seek out, try on, to feel the “fit” and to understand its formidable existential effect.

Northumberland is the ‘Land of the Far Horizon’ and England’s most northerly county. It was once a place of industrial innovation and manufacturing, literally fuelled by the coal brought up from its depths. Now Northumberland is a quieter place, loved by residents and visitors alike for its rolling hills and long, sandy beaches, as well as its charming towns and villages.

With this book in hand, meet Grace Darling, a Victorian heroine who took to storm-tossed seas to help rescue survivors of a terrible shipwreck; visit Amble, the ‘Friendliest Port’, and discover its connection to the Mauretania, once the fastest passenger ship to sail the Atlantic; and take in Turner’s View, an atmospheric stretch of coastline that was a lifelong inspiration to Britain’s greatest landscape painter.

You can also take a walk to the top of Cheviot, the county’s highest mountain and what was once a massive and very active volcano; and then top it off in the tranquil setting of St Cuthbert’s Island, where the eponymous saint went to get away from the strangely hectic whirl of monastic life.

Written by a proud northerner, this book will help you discover the more offbeat corners of Northumberland, and appreciate its many treasures.