The 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize Winner Was Just Revealed

3,900 submissions from artisans spanning 124 countries and regions. 30 finalists. The 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize was quite intense, to say the least. A 12-person jury of prominent leaders with backgrounds in design, architecture, journalism, criticism, and museum curatorship decided on a winner: Andrés Anza, a Mexican ceramic artist. On May 14, Aubrey Plaza, a muse for the Spanish fashion house (if you haven’t watched the actor in the Decades of Confusion campaign video, you’re in for a treat), presented the €50,000 award at Paris’ famed Palais de Tokyo museum. “Thank you Jar Jar, my best friend,” Plaza said, according to Vogue, to Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson as he passed her the microphone.

“This year’s edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft prize presents a selection of works that feature organic and biomorphic forms that push materials to their physical limits,” the press release said. Anza, who earned a BA from the University of Monterrey in 2014, was honored with the prestigious accolade thanks to his piece titled I only know what I have seen. The artist’s one-of-a-kind life-sized sculpture (pictured below) was created using thousands of tiny spikes made from individual ceramic protrusions. The statement continues, “The jury observed that this work defies time and cultural context, drawing upon ancient, archaeological forms but also tracing a post-digital aesthetic that sees ceramics absorbing the most defining influences of our time.”

The jury also selected three special mentions: Japanese artist Miki Asai for her miniature vessels titled Still life, French designer Emmanuel Boos’ coffee table named Comme un lego, and Korean artist Heechan Kim for his sculptural vessel called #16.

If you reside in Paris or have a trip planned this summer, check out the exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, which will showcase all 30 of the shortlisted work from May 15 until June 9.