Strata of Illusion took a thousand sheets of paper through a porcelain bath, then a kiln. The paper is gone. The shape stayed. It carried Jongjin Park to the Loewe prize this month.
The Loewe Foundation announced the winner of its 2026 Craft Prize on 12 May, the night before the finalists' exhibition opened to the public at the National Gallery Singapore. Jongjin Park, born in South Korea, took the silver trophy and the €50,000 prize. The jury chose the work unanimously.
The piece is called Strata of Illusion. It reads as a chair that has slumped, or a stone bench compressed by weight. The surface is banded in pale blues, coral reds, chalky yellows and moss greens, the colours sitting in irregular bands like rock or stacked cloth. The whole thing is porcelain.
The method
Park works with tissue paper. He soaks the sheets in porcelain slip mixed with hand-tinted pigments. He folds the sheets, stacks them by the hundred, presses them into a block. When the kiln fires, the paper burns away. What is left is porcelain that has memorised the folds.
The technique sits between ceramics and bookbinding. The result is dense and fragile at the same time, fixed in fired clay but reading like cloth. The jury cited the work for confounding what ceramics are supposed to do. The judging process is closed; the announcement is public.
Loewe craft and atelier · Courtesy of Loewe / LVMH
The prize
The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize was set up in 2016 by Jonathan Anderson during his eleven-year run at the house. It now sits inside the wider Loewe programme under Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the former Proenza Schouler designers who took the creative-director seat in spring 2025. The prize moved between London, Madrid, Tokyo, Paris, Seoul and New York before this year's Singapore edition.
Thirty finalists were shortlisted from a record submission pool. They came in from twenty-five countries. The work ranged across ceramics, wood, lacquer, paper, textile, metal and stone. Two artists received Special Mentions and €5,000 each. The exhibition runs in Singapore through 14 June.
A house prize that has outgrown the house. Loewe puts a craftsman in the room, then steps back.
The Splendid EditWhat the prize does for Loewe is harder to measure than a runway. It signals the brand's older argument, that fashion is one application of craft and not its summit. The Anderson years made the argument visually. McCollough and Hernandez have so far kept it in place, with the prize as one of the clearest carry-overs from the previous era.
The Singapore choice matters too. Asia is the prize's largest entry pool, year on year. Holding the exhibition at the National Gallery Singapore puts the work in a regional cultural institution, away from the brand's commercial calendar. Park's win continues a steady Korean and Japanese presence in the shortlists since 2017.
Park collects the cheque and the trophy in Singapore. The work goes back to him after the show; the title stays. The prize moves to a new city next year, with a fresh open call and a new shortlist. The argument it makes for Loewe carries over either way.
The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026 exhibition runs at the National Gallery Singapore through 14 June. Details at craftprize.loewe.com.
Photography courtesy of Loewe and LVMH · Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026