Soul Clap Its Hands And Sing: Jewellery As Repair And Transformation

Design is more than creation. It is restoration, preservation, and renewal. It has the power to heal, to replenish, and to sustain life. In every object, space, or system we design, we have the opportunity to repair what is broken, honour what has been lost, and forge something meaningful for the future.

How design can be an act of repair and transformation? At Cleopatra’s Bling, this philosophy is embedded in the very nature of our craft. Rooted in Istanbul, a city shaped by centuries of cultural exchange and artistic evolution, the work embraces traditional jewellery-making techniques as a way to preserve history while continuously adapting to the present. Jewellery, like cities and communities, holds the imprints of time. It carries memories, narratives, and connections across generations. Beyond adornment, it has the ability to restore, mend broken links, reimagine lost traditions, and create objects imbued with deep personal and cultural meaning.

Inspired by Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats’ meditation on the endurance of art, Soul Clap Its Hands and Sing explores jewellery as an artefact of movement, ritual, and transformation. Like poetry and music, jewellery carries the imprint of its maker and wearer across time. Rooted in ancient techniques from Byzantium and beyond, Cleopatra’s Bling pieces are vessels of regeneration, forged through fire, shaped by hand, and imbued with memory.

This exhibition brings this journey to life through an immersive experience of sound, texture, and form. A selection of Cleopatra’s Bling designs will be presented alongside ancient jewellery artefacts, relics, and casts of historical pieces, highlighting the endurance of craftsmanship as both repair and reinvention. Visitors will be surrounded by the echoes of master artisans at work—the rhythmic hammering of metal, the whisper of wax carving, and the weight of history in every piece. By engaging the senses, Soul Clap Its Hands and Sing celebrates jewellery as a living artform. Just as Yeats envisioned art as something eternal, shaped in “hammered gold and gold enamelling,” this exhibition reveals jewellery as more than adornment. It is a chorus of hands, a song of transformation, and a bridge between worlds.