Dubai, UAE, February 15, 2017:  LOEWE is pleased to announce the names of the 26 participants that have been selected by a panel of experts for the 2017 edition of the LOEWE Craft Prize.

The finalists are (in alphabetical order, with nationality):

• Adi Toch, Israel
• Anne Low, Canada
• Artesanías Panikua, Mexico
• Bae Sejin, Republic of Korea
• Brendan Lee Satish Tang, Canada
• Celia Pym, United Kingdom
• Chiachio & Giannone, Argentina
• David Huycke, Belgium
• Ernst Gamperl, Germany
• Fátima Tocornal, Spain
• Guillermo Álvarez-Charvel, Mexico
• Heidi Friesen, Canada
• Helena Schepens, Belgium
• Igawa Takeshi, Japan
• Kim Buck, Denmark
• Kristina Rothe, Germany
• Lino Tagliapietra, Italy
• Patrícia Domingues, Portugal
• Robert Baines, Australia
• Sangwoo Kim, Republic of Korea
• Sara Flynn, United Kingdom
• Shuji Nakagawa, Japan
• Sona, Bangladesh
• Sylvie Vandenhoucke, Belgium
• Yoshiaki Kojiro, Japan
• Zhilong Zheng, China

Selection Process
The 26 finalists were selected by a panel of experts from close to 4,000 submissions by artisans representing a broad array of crafts and more than
75 countries on five continents. The diverse spectrum of submitted works covered a variety of techniques, media and modes of expression.

The experts’ panel convened in Madrid for two days on 31 January, 2017 to review all presented works. In their deliberations, the panel sought to identify the most outstanding works in terms of technical accomplishment, innovation and artistic vision. Regarding the selection process, the experts stated: ‘The chosen works reflect their author’s total dedication: a melding of idea, skill and process; a tactile materialisation of mastery and vision. The selected finalists —who range from 20-somethings to octogenarians— blur the boundary between art and craft.’

From the list of pre-selected finalists, in April 2017 a jury composed by leading figures from the world of design will select the winner of the 2017 LOEWE Craft Prize (please visit loewecraftprize.com for jury member portraits and exclusive quotes on why craft matters).
The winner of the 2017 LOEWE Craft Prize will be announced on 10 April 2017 in Madrid.
All the works will be exhibited at the Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM) (10 April - 10 May, 2017), and then in New York (Chamber Gallery, 31 May - 7 June) and Tokyo (November 2017)

Below are the names of the members of the expert panel and jury.

Jury

• Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE Creative Director
• Gijs Bakker, jewellery artist and co-founder of Droog Design
• Rolf Fehlbaum, former CEO and soul of Vitra
• Naoto Fukasawa, designer and Director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum
• Enrique Loewe, LOEWE FOUNDATION Honorary President
• Deyan Sudjic, essayist and Director of the Design Museum, London
• Benedetta Tagliabue, architect and Pritzker Prize jury member
• Stefano Tonchi, Editor-in-Chief W Magazine
• Patricia Urquiola, architect and industrial designer
• Anatxu Zabalbeascoa (Chairwoman), architecture and design correspondent for El País

Experts Panel

• John Allen, master weaver and textile designer
• Claudi Casanovas, ceramist
• Sara Die Trill, LOEWE accessories designer
• Ramón Puig, jewellery artist
• Markku Salo, glass artist
• Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, architecture and design correspondent for El País

The Prize
The annual LOEWE Craft Prize was launched by the LOEWE FOUNDATION in 2016 to showcase and celebrate newness, excellence and artistic merit in modern craftsmanship. With this initiative, the brand aims to acknowledge the importance of craft in today’s culture and recognise working artisans whose talent, vision and will to innovate will set a standard for the future. The incentive for the prize goes back to LOEWE’s beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846.

Anyone over 18 years of age working in a craft-based profession is welcome to apply.

The award was conceived by creative director Jonathan Anderson. ‘Craft is the essence of LOEWE. As a house, we are about craft in the purest sense of the word. That is where our modernity lies, and it will always be relevant,’ Anderson stated at the award’s inception.

The winner of the LOEWE Craft Prize receives 50,000 Euros in cash. In addition, the winning work as well as all shortlisted entries are included in a special exhibition —to go on view in Madrid, Tokyo and New York, among other cities— and its accompanying catalogue.

Adi Toch, Israel
‘Encircling Vessel, Whispering Vessels series’, britannia silver contains stainless steel balls, 20 x 20 x 12 cm. 2015
Evoking the senses through form, movement and sound, this tactile piece —which contains a set of visible steel balls trapped in its hollow interior— invites investigation and wonder before revealing its function.

Anne Low, Canada
‘An Ambitious Pagan I’, madder dyed handwoven linen coral black walnut, 119 x 22.6 x 0.75 cm. 2015
A decorative, devotional structure created from black walnut, coral and linen using elaborate dying and stitching techniques with the sole purpose of showcasing an autonomous piece of handwoven cloth.

Artesanias Panikua, Mexico
Antonio, Gabriela and Verónica Cornelio; Bertha Esperanza Villagómez ‘Tata Curiata’, wheat fiber, 143 cm. 2016
Inspired by Mexican folk mythology and traditional crafts, a radiant sun with a star at its centre made from hundreds of individual wheat fiber strands in a feat of virtuosic artistry and reinterpreted basket weaving.

Bae Sejin, Republic of Korea
‘Waiting for Godot 130307-134090’, clay, 65 x 65 x 54 cm. 2015
An unexpected work of ceramics, the piece’s aesthetic force derives from its meticulous construction out of countless numbered pieces of clay, an obsessive exercise in repetition inspired by Samuel Beckett.

Brendan Lee Satish Tang, Canada
‘Manga Ormolu Ver. 5.0-s’, low fire ceramics, glaze, acrylic, 40.6 x 40.6 x 64 cm. 2016
An original amalgam of ceramic tradition, pop culture and the aesthetics of technology, this object updates a classic Chinese vessel with robotic prosthetics to create a single unified piece from clay and acrylic.

Celia Pym, United Kingdom
‘Norwegian Sweater’, original damaged sweater from Annemor Sundbø´s Ragpile Collection, 78 x 74 x 8 cm. 2010
Made by repairing a damaged, salvaged hand-knitted garment with white yarn, this conceptual textile visualises ideas of destruction and restoration in a wearable piece created out of seeming waste.

Chiachio & Giannone, Argentina
Leonardo Chiachio, Daniel Giannone
‘Selva Blanca’, cotton threads rayon wood fabric jewellery threads, 460 x 285 cm. 3 pieces. 2015
Joyful and imaginative, this large handmade textile work uses a rich mix of embroidered materials —including jewellery— to create an animal kingdom brought to live in a forest of colors and shapes.

David Huycke, Belgium
‘Edge of Chaos’, silver, 17 x 17 x 13 cm. 2012
In this object, silver is masterfully worked to create a deliberate tension between complexity —evident in concept, texture and detailing— utter simplicity of form and raw materiality.

Ernst Gamperl, Germany
‘Tree of Life 2’, oak, 53 x 51 x 92 cm. 2016
Made from a massive old oak that was uprooted in a storm, the form of this impressive pair of objects emerges directly from the tree’s natural qualities, while careful surface details evince the artisan’s hand.

Fátima Tocornal, Spain
‘Dreamers’, enamel plated nickel silver, 0.5 x 6.5 x 6.5 cm. each. 4 pieces. 2015
These enamelled silver pieces —inspired by the silence before creating— combine material and technical expertise with a use of figurative decoration that is unusual in a contemporary work of jewellery.

Guillermo Álvarez-Charvel, Mexico
‘Animal Print’, paper, 55 x 65 x 60 cm. 2010
Fragile in appearance but strong in structure, these reconfigurable containers —assembled from folded paper in a visible structure— connect indigenous craft and industrial process with expressive simplicity.

Heidi Friesen, Canada
‘NeoFolk’, linen cotton hemp silk, 250 x 200 cm. 2016
This textile work conveys a story using thread, colour, and pattern, combining a painstakingly reworked antique linen panel with newly woven cloth to represent cultural exchange through material and craft.

Helena Schepens, Belgium
‘Ellerbeckia’, sterling silver, 25 x 25 x 8 cm. 2010
Mixing concept and craftsmanship, in this vessel silver is worked to produce a refined pattern of holes that give the metal the delicate appearance of crystal while creating unexpected and poetic shadow effects.

Igawa Takeshi, Japan
‘Line and Surface: VI’, urushi japanese lacquer linen urethane form, 170 x 49 x 32 cm. 2013
This elegant work applies a traditional Japanese form of lacquering (Urushi) onto a polyurethane mold to express the aristocratic craft’s essence and examine the relationship between form, texture and function.

Kim Buck, Denmark
‘Puffed Up series 2011-2016’, 999.9 gold, 4 x 3 x 5 cm. per ring. 3 pieces. 2012
Three rings that in form and material evoke signet rings, traditional identity symbols, unexpectedly made from thin gold sheet that has been welded and filled with air as a metaphor for the risks of inflation.

Kristina Rothe, Germany
‘Burial object “Steps”’, handmade paper, 18 x 14 x 18 cm. 2010
A deeply poetic funeral vessel made from handmade paper —a material that conveys transient lightness— symbolising a new beginning through simple sensual shape, luminous colour and ephemeral materiality.

Lino Tagliapietra, Italy
‘Dinosaur’, blown glass Roman multicolor murrini, 41 x 22 x 147 cm. 2016
An multicolour blown glass work linking the strength of the titular prehistoric animal with the fluidity of sea creatures, combining expert formgiving with a sophisticated heat intarsia technique to striking effect.

Patrícia Domingues, Portugal
‘Many&Deliberated’, reconstructed lapis lazuli, 6 x 6 x 3 cm. 2016
A piece of jewellery made from a block of lapis lazuli, broken and fragmented to achieve a play of cavity, texture and structure and uncover a hidden inner landscape through intentional, controlled fracturing.

Robert Baines, Australia
‘Steampunk from the Cosmos’, gold 750, 12 x 39 x 10 cm. 2016
In this precious piece made entirely out of gold, the craftsman marries the historic craft of filigree and traditional jewellery-making techniques with a wholly contemporary and personal aesthetic vocabulary.

Sangwoo Kim, Republic of Korea
‘Winter’, stoneware and porcelain, 145 x 78 x 70 cm. 2016
Inspired by a Swiss mountain range in the cold season, this ceramic sculpture is covered with porcelain to evoke snow, while advanced polishing methods achieve a precise continuous form and skin-like tactility.

Sara Flynn, United Kingdom
‘Esker Vessel’, porcelain, 12 x 22 x 29 cm. 2016
An iconic ceramics piece that has been cut, reassembled and spray-glazed in an attempt to explore volume, form and the aesthetic qualities of high-fired porcelain though exquisite color and shape.

Shuji Nakagawa, Japan
‘Big Trays of parquetry’, wood japanese cedar, 20 x 20 x 1 cm. 3 pieces. 2015
Working with the individual characteristics of the material, masterful woodworking produces three unusually tactile pieces while a parquetry method introduces scientific rigour to a traditional craft.

Sona Rani Roy, Bangladesh
‘White on White Quilt - Moyur’, cotton fabric, 180 x 230 cm. 2016
This delicate piece took six months to complete from multiple cotton layers using a traditional technique that is passed on across generations of rural women, showing the impact artisanal knowledge can have.

Sylvie Vandenhoucke, Belgium
‘Converging line’, glass - pâte de verre, 93 x 93 x 6 cm. 2014
A large wall piece made using an old complicated form of working with glass, in which thousands of tiny glass pieces are assembled into a pattern by firing them in a cast till they find their predetermined place.

Yoshiaki Kojiro, Japan
‘Structural Blue’, glass powder and copper oxide powder, 54 x 54 x 39 cm. 2015
An exercise in material investigation and rich colour, this piece transforms powder into structured form through a complex process that fires blended glass and copper oxide into a precisely molded shape.

Zhilong Zheng, China
‘Tree Chair’, wood, 46 x 46 x 73 cm. 2015
Inspired by the natural origin of timber, this singular piece of furniture appears to emerge organically from the woods, combining Chinese craft and symbolism
with decorative value and straightforward usefulness.