The Annual Prize Honors Experimental Craft Practices Exploring Material Transformation, Technique, and Innovation
Loewe has announced the winner and special mentions for the 2026 edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, awarding the top honor to South Korean artist Jongjin Park for his sculptural ceramic work Strata of Illusion (2025).
Chosen from a shortlist of 30 finalists by an international jury spanning design, architecture, criticism, and museum curation, Park received the €50,000 prize for a work that challenges conventional understandings of ceramics through a process rooted in material instability and transformation. The jury included architect Frida Escobedo, designer Patricia Urquiola, curator Abraham Thomas, Musée des Arts Décoratifs director Olivier Gabet, and Loewe creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez.
Park’s work takes the form of a seat-like structure composed from thousands of layered sheets of paper coated in colored porcelain slip. During firing, the paper burns away, causing the structure to collapse and distort under heat and gravity, resulting in a sculptural object shaped equally by intention and material surrender.
In a statement, the jury praised the work for “its ability to confound expectations of what ceramics can be,” noting how the piece references multiple craft traditions simultaneously. While rooted in porcelain, its use of air and form evokes glassblowing, while the layering process recalls bookbinding. The jury particularly highlighted the poetic disappearance of the paper during firing and the “honest imperfection” of the final slumped form.
Two special mentions were also awarded this year. The first recognized the Baba Tree Master Weavers collective in collaboration with Spanish designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón for Frafra Tapestry (2024), a large-scale woven work inspired by aerial imagery of a traditional village in Ghana’s Gurunsi region. Developed between Madrid and Ghana using traditional basketry techniques and elephant grass, the work was commended for merging ancestral weaving practices with contemporary mapping technologies while documenting threatened architectural traditions.
Italian jeweler Graziano Visintin received the second special mention for Collier (2025), a pair of necklaces composed of miniature gold cubes decorated using niello, an ancient metalworking technique. The jury praised the contemporary interpretation of the historic craft method and the painterly quality achieved across the surface of the jewelry.
The 2026 edition of the prize reflects broader themes of tension, transformation, and material experimentation. Across ceramics, textiles, metalwork, glass, lacquer, furniture, and bookbinding, the shortlisted works explore the balance between structure and collapse, tradition and innovation, precision and imperfection.
All 30 shortlisted works will be exhibited at the National Gallery Singapore from May 13 through June 14, 2026, with an accompanying exhibition catalogue and digital presentation available online.
Launched in 2016 as a tribute to Loewe’s origins as a craft collective founded in 1846, the annual Loewe Foundation Craft Prize continues to position contemporary craft within a global cultural conversation, celebrating artists whose work pushes the boundaries of technique, process, and artistic expression.
“In the ninth edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, I am more proud than ever,” said Sheila Loewe, president of the Loewe Foundation. “This year’s shortlist has been one of the hardest to judge and provided the jury with the opportunity to discuss the far reaches of what craft can be — and will be in the future.”
“It has been a privilege to join the jury of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize,” added Loewe creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. “Across each of the shortlisted works, we encountered an extraordinary sense of commitment, creativity, and innovation.”