Loewe Craft Prize Goes to a Korean Metalworker

May 14. Loewe announced the 2026 Craft Prize winner in a ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in New York. Jongjin Park, a metalworker based in Seoul, took the €50,000 prize for a hand-forged steel vessel titled Accumulation. The piece is built from hundreds of individually hammered steel plates, welded and patinated to a charcoal finish. Park's process is documented in video: each plate shaped over an anvil, no machine assist. The work took eleven months.

The thirty finalists represent a tight editorial line. No conceptual fluff. No irony-craft. Every piece in the show is made by hand, using techniques older than the maker. Basketry from Japan. Ceramics from Mexico. Lacquerware from Vietnam. Textile work from India. The curatorial stance is clear: craft as a living practice, not a museum vitrine.

Park's win follows a pattern. The Loewe Craft Prize has favored process-heavy work since its 2017 launch. Past winners include a Japanese basket maker (2017), a Korean ceramicist (2019), and a British furniture maker (2023). The common thread: work that requires a decade of apprenticeship to execute. The prize is not about novelty. It's about mastery at the edge of obsolescence.

The finalists were selected from 3,200 submissions across 120 countries. The jury included Jonathan Anderson (Loewe creative director), Genta Ishizuka (designer), and Anatxu Zabalbeascoa (architecture critic). The shortlist skews toward makers working in traditional materials with contemporary forms. A Korean metalworker fits the house aesthetic better than most: restrained, structural, quiet-luxury adjacent.

The exhibition runs through June 8 at the Noguchi Museum, then travels to Seoul and Tokyo. Park's vessel will enter the Loewe Foundation collection, which now holds nine prize-winning works. The foundation does not resell. It archives.