The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize serves as a powerful reminder of handcraft’s ongoing cultural importance. Initiated in 2016, the global competition champions visionary approaches and technical mastery in contemporary making. The award honors the brand’s mid-nineteenth-century roots as a collaborative artisan workshop founded in Madrid, bridging the gap between high fashion and heritage techniques.
The 2026 iteration drew massive international interest, with upward of 5,100 entries spanning 133 different regions. A preliminary committee ultimately narrowed the field to thirty standout creators from nineteen nations. The resulting shortlist showcased a wide spectrum of material disciplines, ranging from traditional ceramics, metalwork, and glass to textiles, furniture design, and bookbinding. A prestigious panel of thought leaders across architecture, curation, and design gathered to determine the ultimate winner. Under the leadership of Loewe Foundation president Sheila Loewe, the 2026 jury included renowned architects like Wang Shu, Minsuk Cho, and Frida Escobedo; designers Patricia Urquiola and Naoto Fukasawa; acclaimed ceramicist Magdalene Odundo; museum professionals Olivier Gabet and Abraham Thomas; as well as Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, acting as creative directors for Loewe.
Emerging from the group of finalists, South Korean ceramist Jongjin Park captured the grand prize of €50,000. Park secured the award for his 2025 sculptural creation, Strata of Illusion. Resembling a chair, the artwork plays with the boundary between structural integrity and physical breakdown. Park built the piece by stacking thousands of individual paper pages, each treated with a tinted porcelain wash, into a solid, blocklike shape. As the piece is fired, the paper combusts completely, allowing extreme heat and gravitational pull to warp and melt the remaining ceramic skeleton into its ultimate, drooping silhouette.
Beyond the main prize, the judging panel awarded a pair of special mentions, each carrying a €5,000 grant. Frafra Tapestry (2024) is a joint project between Spanish designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and the Ghanaian artisans of the Baba Tree Master Weavers. Conceived in Madrid and meticulously crafted in Ghana from natural and dyed elephant grass using ancestral basketry techniques, the tapestry translates aerial photography of a historic Gurunsi settlement into a massive woven topography.
The second special mention honored Italian jeweler Graziano Visintin for his 2025 work, Collier. The entry consists of two delicate necklaces formed from miniature gold cubes. Visintin embellished these geometric links with niello, an ancient metalworking technique. The committee praised his masterful, almost painterly application of this process from antiquity to achieve a distinctly modern, elegant aesthetic that resembles an endless string of tiny canvases.
Once again, the 2026 iteration of the competition frames artisanal making as a dynamic, evolving dialogue. The chosen works reflect a fascinating interplay between order and disruption, where age-old customs are boldly reimagined for the present day. Audiences can view the complete lineup of thirty finalist pieces at the National Gallery Singapore, where the official exhibition runs from May 13 through June 14, 2026.
