Cover A scene at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition at National Gallery, Singapore. Pictured from left to right: Nobuyuki Tanaka’s Inner side – Outer Side 2021 -N; Frafra Tapestry by Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón
A scene at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition at National Gallery, Singapore. Pictured from left to right: Nobuyuki Tanaka’s Inner side – Outer Side 2021 -N; Frafra Tapestry by Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón
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From slumped porcelain forms to woven elephant grass and intricate bookbinding, the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize spotlights contemporary craft at its most inventive—marking its Singapore debut with a local finalist in the mix
As the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize arrives in Singapore for the first time, this year’s edition turns its attention to works shaped by experimentation, material transformation and technical risk. Held at National Gallery Singapore, the ninth edition of the annual award has named South Korean ceramic artist Jongjin Park the winner of its 2026 prize.
Park was awarded the €50,000 prize for Strata of Illusion (2025), a seat-like ceramic form that appears simultaneously controlled and collapsing. Built from thousands of layered sheets of paper coated in coloured porcelain slip, the work undergoes a dramatic transformation in the kiln: the paper burns away, leaving the structure to slump and distort under heat and gravity. The resulting form feels architectural yet fragile, suspended somewhere between precision and surrender.
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Above Jongjin Park
Above Strata of Illusion by Jongjin Park
Jongjin Park
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Chosen from 30 finalists by a jury comprising leading figures across design, architecture and museum curatorship—including essayist and architect Frida Escobedo; architect and industrial designer Patricia Urquiola; Abraham Thomas, curator of Modern Architecture, Design and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Olivier Gabet, Director of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Louvre Museum, Paris; alongside Loewe creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez—Park’s work stood out for challenging conventional expectations of ceramics. The jury praised its ability to move across craft traditions: while created in porcelain, the work’s layered paper structure evokes bookbinding, while its use of air to establish form recalls glassblowing.
Two special mentions were also awarded. The first went to Frafra Tapestry (2024), created by the Baba Tree Master Weavers in Ghana alongside Spanish designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón. A monumental woven work inspired by aerial photographs of traditional Gurunsi compounds in northern Ghana, the tapestry was developed using elephant grass and traditional basketry techniques, with architectural plans first drawn in Madrid before being realised in Ghana.
Speaking to Tatler Singapore, Catalán de Ocón described how the work drew intuitively from the architecture of the region. The project was realised by a collective of women weavers, working with natural and dyed elephant grass—a material rooted in Ghanaian basket-making traditions. “You can feel the strength of these houses from the weaving,” he added.
Álvaro Catalán de Ocón collaborated with the Baba Tree Master Weavers for Frafra Tapestry
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The second special mention went to Italian jewellery artist Graziano Visintin for Collier (2025), a pair of necklaces composed of tiny gold cubes decorated using niello, an ancient metalworking technique in which dark metallic alloys are fused onto engraved surfaces. The jury praised Visintin’s painterly application of niello, admiring how the necklaces created the impression of “endless miniature paintings elegantly strung together”.
Above Adelene Koh, the second Singaporean shortlisted for the prize
Above Endless (2025) by Adelene Koh
Adelene Koh, the second Singaporean shortlisted for the prize
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Singapore was also represented among this year’s finalists by professional bookbinder Adelene Koh, whose work Endless (2025) was selected as one of 30 shortlisted entries from more than 5,100 submissions worldwide, alongside artists from countries including Spain, Taiwan and Zimbabwe. Koh’s work draws on the decorative endband—the colourful stitched detail found at the head and tail of a book’s spine—and transforms it into a sculptural meditation on continuity.
“The endband is one of my most favourite parts of bookbinding. It’s so colourful—you can use any thread colour,” shared the professional bookbinder. “Compared to the rest of the book, where customers might ask for brown leather, this is the only part where I can have a voice, where I choose something of my own.”
For Endless, Koh wanted to imagine what might happen if the stitched detail could continue indefinitely. “I just wanted to keep going,” she explained. “The only way that it could happen is for the book to just meet itself in the front and the back … the endband never ends.”
Koh’s selection marks the second time a Singaporean craftsperson has been shortlisted for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, following Ashley Yeo in 2018.
Above Another scene at at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition at National Gallery, Singapore
Another scene at at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition at National Gallery, Singapore
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This year’s shortlisted works—spanning ceramics, jewellery, textiles, woodwork, bookbinding, glass and lacquer—are on view at National Gallery Singapore from May 13 to June 14, offering a rare opportunity to encounter contemporary craft practices from around the world in one place.
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Nafeesa Saini is the Features Editor at Tatler Singapore, where she shapes long-form stories on culture, business, philanthropy, wellness, and the people driving change in Asia. With a deep interest in storytelling that intersects meaningfully with identity and impact, she has profiled a diverse range of visionaries, from scientific pioneers in AI and health to creative trailblazers and literary minds.
Nafeesa’s writing includes cover stories and profiles that spotlight influential voices, alongside commentary on the trends reshaping our world.
Off the clock, Nafeesa unwinds with fiction, a good thrift hunt, and ‘brainrot’ TikTok scroll—while always keeping one eye on her next cultural getaway, usually to Indonesia.
