From “Explosion” to “Obsession” – meet jewellery designer Bogdana Topreva

There are many ways to say something about who we are and what our place in the world is.

For Bogdana Topreva, jewellery is one of them. Her retrospective exhibition “Obsession”, at the Sofia Press Gallery and Bookshop, traces three decades in which jewellery has become much more than an adornment of the body – carrying memories, ideas and a sense of where we stand in the world.

“I really do feel obsessed with jewellery, but in a positive sense,” the artist says of the exhibition’s title. And in this anniversary year, she admits that her own approach has changed:

“At the beginning of my creative journey, I was much freer. Maybe that’s typical when you’re younger – you throw yourself into things with much more enthusiasm, without thinking about the consequences or exactly what the jewellery looks like, but more about what you want to say through it. Unfortunately, I’ve lost some of that, and I’m now in a period that is much more settled, much more serious and much more focused on the jewellery itself.”

In 1998, amid a period of dramatic personal and social change, Bogdana Topreva created her “Explosion” collection. Its large-scale pieces combined silver with a polymer that glows under ultraviolet light, giving the jewellery a striking theatrical quality. Her two most recent collections, “Invisible Roofs” and “Sofia – Paris”, explore a different perspective – that of birds and people in flight. Using drone photographs, Topreva transforms views of urban architecture normally hidden from us into jewellery.

Looking back across those three decades, Topreva hopes visitors will see her own story reflected in the jewellery. “My life is bound up with creativity, and in every piece of jewellery I tell some kind of fairy tale. If someone who doesn’t know me walks into the gallery and can sense that just by looking at the jewellery, I’ll be happy to have touched them emotionally,” she says.

Topreva studied Industrial Design at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, but jewellery was already the focus of her graduation project. She later joined the residency programme at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, where she held solo exhibitions in 2012 and 2025. Her collections have also been shown in Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna and Sofia.

But where does an idea come from – from within, from the world around us, or from the imagination that feeds artistic inspiration?

“An idea can come in all sorts of ways,” Bogdana Topreva tells Radio Bulgaria. “I might get up in the morning, hear a sparrow singing and make a collection called ‘Birds’ – that’s actually how that one came about. A film or a song might stir something in me emotionally. Inspiration can come from anywhere, at any moment. I believe that people who create are touched by God, and I’m very grateful to have that feeling, to be able to do this. So yes, I believe that my ideas are sent to me and that I am a conduit.”

Whatever she creates, Topreva’s jewellery has a recognisable signature – something, she says, that both colleagues and clients have noticed. “I’m glad people can see that little something, although I myself can’t say exactly what it is,” she says. Her distinctive style can be recognised even in her enormous pieces of body armour.

“They are more like stage jewellery, but that doesn’t stop them from expressing a certain kind of sensitivity and attitude towards the world,” Topreva says. “And I think there are enough women who would put on a piece of armour like that and walk out into the street. But the ones who would do it are those who carry one single quality in their soul – freedom. Despite the armour.”

Topreva sees many more years of work and exhibitions ahead. Whether the next stage will be a continuation of what she has already created or take her in an entirely new direction, she does not yet know. For now, she is content to see where inspiration leads:

“We’ll have to see where that touch from God and my imagination take me next.”

Editor: Elena Karkalanova