LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2022 / Winner
A delicate basket woven from horsehair, created by Dahye Jeong, wins this year’s prestigious craft prize.
By TDE Editorial Team / 30th June 2022
Dahye Jeong, winner of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2022, with her work ‘A Time of Sincerity’
COURTESY: Dahye Jeong and LOEWE FOUNDATION
ON THE 30TH June, at the newly opened Seoul Museum of Craft Art (SeMoCA), LOEWE announced the winner of the 2022 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize.
Dahye Jeong, born in Korea in 1989, has been awarded the prize for her work ‘A Time of Sincerity’, 2021. This delicate basket, transparent and light, with its subtle colouring and beautiful, symmetrical patterning, is woven from horsehair, using a 500-year-old hat making technique that had been thought a lost skill in Korea. A sculptor by initial training, Jeong subsequently studied textiles at graduate level at Korea Traditional Culture University, where she is currently undertaking doctoral studies in traditional textiles. At the 2021 Cheongju Craft Biennale she was awarded the Grand Prize, Republic of Korea.
Dahye Jeong, ‘A Time of Sincerity’, 2021
COURTESY: Dahye Jeong and LOEWE FOUNDATION
The LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize is judged by a jury composed of leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, journalism, criticism and museum curatorship, including Magdalene Odundo, Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, Deyan Sudjic, Abraham Thomas and Patricia Urquiola. The jury particularly praised Jeong’s dedication to reviving a historic technique, which, through her contemporary design sensibility and experimental approach, she has made responsive to the culture of our own time.
Jeong was chosen from among 30 finalists – whose works encompass ceramics, woodwork, textiles, leather, basketry, glass, metal, jewellery and lacquer. These works, selected earlier in the year from over 3,100 international submissions, will be on show at SeMoCA for the whole of July.
Exhibition view, LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2022
COURTESY: Dahye Jeong and LOEWE FOUNDATION
Two other artists were also selected by the jury for special mention: Julia Obermaier for her jewellery pieces, ‘Verborgen’, 2021 and Andile Dyalvane for his work ‘Cornish Wall’, 2019. Julia Obermaier, based in Germany, was praised for work that “completely redefines how jewellery is constructed, treating the gem as the structure and reconsidering where the value of the jewellery lies.” Meanwhile, Dyalvane’s powerful red earthenware coiled vessel, made at the Leech Studio in St Ives UK, is influenced by both his native Xhosa culture and the Cornish coastline. The jury admired “the paradoxical combination of both strength and size, and intricate detailing, which is crafted using a bonsai brush.”
Andile Dyalvane, ‘Cornish Wall’, 2019
COURTESY: Southern Guild
The annual prize was launched by the LOEWE FOUNDATION in 2016 to celebrate excellence, artistic merit and a contemporary spirit in modern craftsmanship. The brainchild of creative director Jonathan Anderson, the prize acknowledges the importance of craft in today’s culture and recognises working artists whose talent, vision and will to innovate set a new standard for the future. The prize reflects LOEWE’s beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846.
Exhibition view, LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2022
COURTESY: Dahye Jeong and LOEWE FOUNDATION
The exhibition runs from 1st-31st July 2022.
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