The next edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize is now open for submissions
Loewe has opened submissions for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2022, which will take place in Seoul in spring next year. Entries to the fifth edition of the prize will be accepted until October 25, 2021. The 2021 edition of the prize received almost 3,000 total submissions from 107 countries across the globe. Potential candidates for next year’s edition are invited to submit work at loewecraftprize.com.
The award aims to acknowledge the importance of craft in today’s culture and recognize working artisans whose talent, vision, and will to innovate set a standard for the future.
The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize was launched in 2016 to showcase and celebrate excellence, artistic merit, and originality in modern craftsmanship. It seeks to acknowledge and support international artisans who demonstrate an exceptional ability to create objects of superior aesthetic value, with the winner receiving €50,000 or almost ₱300,000.
The award, which was conceived by Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson, aims to acknowledge the importance of craft in today’s culture and recognize working artisans whose talent, vision, and will to innovate set a standard for the future. The incentive for the prize goes back to Loewe’s beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846.
“Craft is always going to be modern,” says Anderson. “It is about creating objects that have a formula of their own and speak their own language, creating a dialogue that didn’t exist before. It is about newness as much as it is about tradition.” An expert panel composed of artists, artisans, essayists, curators, and designers will consider all submitted works in order to select a shortlist of up to 30 submissions. New additions to the expert panel this year include metal artist and finalist of the Craft Prize 2021 Peter Bauhuis, glass artist and finalist of the Craft Prize 2021 Jiyong Lee, Loewe leather goods design director Juha Marttil, textile designer Kavita Parmar, and ceramicist Zizipho Poswa. The panel’s choice will be based on a number of key criteria—originality, clear artistic vision and merit, precise execution, material excellence, innovative value, and a distinct authorial mark.
The shortlisted works will then form the basis of an exhibition due to go on display in Seoul, South Korea, from which the Prize’s Jury will select the winning piece. New members of the Jury for 2022 include world-renowned Kenyan-born British ceramicist Magdalene Odundo, curator of modern architecture, design, and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Abraham Thomas, and textile artist and Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2021 winner Fanglu Lin.
The winner of this year’s prize, Fanglu Lin, was announced on May 25, 2021 to coincide with the opening of the digital exhibition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2021 on https://craftprize2021.loewe.com. The exhibition is open online until Oct. 21, 2021.
The prize winner will be announced in Seoul in spring 2022.
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