Today, Seoul-based ceramist Jongjin Park was awarded the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize during a ceremony at the National Gallery Singapore. Park’s winning piece, Strata of Illusion (2025), is a partly collapsed rectangular sculpture, which he hand-built by painting colorful porcelain slip onto layered and folded paper towels. These towels burn away in the kiln, leaving a ceramic body behind. His work was chosen from a shortlist of 30 global talents by a multidisciplinary 14-member jury, which, for the first time, included Loewe creative directors Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough.
Born in 1982, Korean artist Park began making traditional moor jar porcelain 26 years ago. In 2014, he was inspired to experiment with clay during his second master’s program in the United Kingdom. “My tutor told me: ‘If you’re making something traditional from Korea in the U.K., you don’t need to study here. You could do that in your country,’” says Park, who later earned his PhD from Seoul’s Kookmin University and is currently an assistant professor at Seoul Women’s University. After initial “shock,” he took the tutor’s advice to expand his horizons. A stack of coursework papers ripe for recycling provided the first step. “I felt if I made a ceramic from them in a similar form, it could be a narrative of my emotional mind,” he says.
Strata of Illusion byJongjin Park.Courtesy of Loewe
Strata of Illusion is one of Park’s largest works, composed of colorful layers, stacked and then fired to form a ceramic vessel nearly 30 inches tall. Its warped side was the result of a kiln cave-in that Park embraced, using an electric tool to carve a void in the structure. The carving unveiled a marbling effect within some of the ceramic strata, now Park’s favorite part of the work.
“We were fascinated by the technique,” says Hernandez. “For me, the most interesting craft exists in the liminal spaces between [disciplines].” Strata of Illusion’s “contrast between its fragility and strength” was appealing, as well, says McCollough.
Ceramist Jongjin Park.Courtesy of Loewe
Since 2016, Spanish fashion house Loewe has awarded this annual prize, each winner chosen for technical skill, material, methodology, or artistic vision. As the 2026 Craft Prize laureate, Park will receive 50,000 euros, about $59,000. In addition to Hernandez and McCollough, this year’s jurors included Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, Abraham Thomas, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern architecture, design, and decorative arts, and Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese architect Wang Shu, among other design industry talents.
At this year’s awards, special mentions went to Baba Tree Weavers x Álvaro Catalán de Ocón’s Frafra Tapestry #2 (2024) and Graziano Visintin’s Collier (2025), who will be awarded 5,000 euros (about $5,900) each. The Loewe Foundation also launched three two-month-long artist residencies, hosted at La Residencia, a Belmond Hotel, in the creative coastal community of Deià on Mallorca. Selected Craft Prize alumni in residence there will create new work inspired by the country’s cultural landscape.
The Loewe Craft Prize jury.Courtesy of Loewe
“The beauty and love of making things to the highest degree is so exciting and rare today when things are often mass-produced,” says Hernandez. “That’s what is so beautiful about the Craft Prize.”
All finalists’ works, which span jewelry, sculpture, woodworking, and more, will be exhibited at the National Gallery Singapore through June 14.
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