Jewelry on the Wild Side

"A choker adorned with yak teeth, an oversize red eel-skin ring and a blue ostrich feather brooch are just a few of the unusual jewels owned by the graphic designer Elena Agostinis, who has turned her collection into a lively, color-drenched 335-page book."  —THE NEW YORK TIMES

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 jewelry using materials not commonly associated with traditional jewelry-making.

While traveling afar, Elena’s profound realization 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 jeweler, 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. Elena tried to carry this “lightness” through in my presentation of the artists’ creations as well.

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 colorful, wearable art, enabling us to seek out, try on, to feel the “fit” and to understand its formidable existential effect.