Kunimasa Aoki Wins the 2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize (and About $57,000)

Loewe announced the winner of its 2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize on Thursday afternoon: Japanese sculptor Kunimasa Aoki won this year's award.

In his work, Aoki explores relationships between time and distortion by using techniques that use time, gravity, and pressure to influence how layers of clay look in his final pieces. The foundation awarded him awarded nearly $57,000 (€50,000) for his "Realm of Living Things 19" work, made in 2024. The jury of 12 (comprised of leading names across design, journalism, art and more) chose the sculptor’s work for "its honest expression of the ancestral coil process, and how the material is expressed in its raw, unfinished form," per the brand.

The jury also named two special mentions, including Nigerian contemporary designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Indian born collective Studio Sumakshi Singh. There were 30 finalists total competing for the prestigious prize. Each of the shortlisted works will be available to see at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid starting May 30 until the exhibition closes on June 29, 2025. It's also available to view online.

"As we celebrate the eighth edition of the prize, I’m struck by the incredible breadth of ingenuity, beauty and skill in the works on show. Each year, the magic of the prize for me is seeing craft’s continued capacity to surprise, innovate and evolve. I am immensely proud of the prize’s role in keeping craft alive," Loewe Foundation President Sheila Loewe said in a statement.

The annual prize launched in 2016 and has since grown into an esteemed happening within the industry, which simultaneously honors the LVMH-owned brand's beginning as a dedicated craft workshop in 1846.

Click here to learn more about this year's prize and shortlisted artists.