What’s Happening: Japanese sculptor Eriko Inazaki was selected as this year’s Loewe Craft Prize winner by creative director Jonathan Anderson and a jury of industry luminaries.

The Download: Each year, the Spanish luxury house’s foundation looks beyond the silo of fashion to celebrate the enduring impact of art, design, and culture in the form of the Loewe Craft Prize. Conceived with the intention to honor under-recognized makers, the prize unearths new talent and accentuates the importance of craft in contemporary culture. Previous winners run the gamut from a giant, cloud-like textile sculpture to a bulbous lacquered object that resembles a bag of oranges.

This year’s winner, sculptor Eriko Inazaki, was selected from a roster of more than 2,700 working artists by a star-studded jury comprising Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, Louvre director Olivier Gabet, Naoto Fukasawa, Enrique Loewe, and Patricia Urqiola. Her contribution, a ceramic sculpture whose crystallized surface evokes an extraterrestrial floral bloom, was described by the jury as virtuosic and lauded for its “spellbinding presence.” The highest praise came for her originality of ornamentation, which was described by jurors as unlike anything they had ever seen before.

At last night’s unveiling event, Inazaki provided insight into her vision and the magnitude of being announced as the winner in an emotional speech. “I’m not clear about naming my works, whether it’s art, craft or something else,” she said. “But I’ve been working all this time with the belief that what is a good piece of work goes beyond the boundaries of categories. This was an opportunity for me to realize that my work would resonate with so many people. It is truly an honor, and I am truly happy.”

Two other designers earned special mentions: West African sculptor Dominique Zinkpè’s wooden wall sculpture, The Watchers, deploys carved wooden Ibéji figures to evoke traditional Yoruba beliefs and was lauded for its “sculptural reinterpretation of traditional beliefs and its expansion of what contemporary craft can be.” Japanese ceramicist Moe Watanabe earned praise for her walnut bark box that jurors compared to the ancient Japanese tradition of Ikebana vase making. Its walnut bark construction was commended for its “celebration of the sheer materiality of bark,” while Watanabe’s use of rivets in the piece was seen as a reference to architectural construction and mending traditions.

The work of Inazaki, Zinkpè, Watanabe and the 27 other finalists are displayed as the first public exhibition to be presented at Isamu Noguchi’s former studio, which neighbors his namesake museum in Queens. “He hated what he called ‘the false horizon of the pedestal,’ and wanted to bring sculpture into everyday life,” the museum’s curator of research, Matthew Kirsch, told Vogue of the late visionary. The sentiment dovetails with Anderson’s motives for conceiving the prize in 2016, in the process creating a link between modern fashion, culture, and craft through recognition of skilled artisans.

In Their Own Words: “Craft is the essence of Loewe,” Anderson said following the announcement of the winner. “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.”

Surface Says: In an industry filled with cynics who say there’s nothing new under the sun, is there any higher compliment than true originality?

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When it comes to craft, Mortlach Single Malt Scotch Whisky is peerless. On the heels of Mortlach by Design, a series of design commissions with the industry’s foremost talents, the original Speyside distiller is bringing its signature cocktails and tasting experiences to New York City’s most exclusive restaurants and bars. Surface readers are invited to the week’s select tastings, beginning tonight at the Campbell and Brandy Library.

Kindly note, admission is by RSVP only.

Perfume is often considered an olfactory time capsule, not only capturing the memories of the wearer, but serving as a reflection of the time and place of its creation. As years pass and trends come and go, so too do the given era’s fragrances thanks to the available materials, fashion, and regulations.

Astier De Villatte, a French company founded in 1993, seeks to revive artifacts forgotten to time, and has most recently set its sights on perfume. To achieve this feat, they enlisted perfume historian Annick Le Guérer and master perfumer Dominique Ropion to resurrect three fragrances from bygone eras. They include Le Dieu Bleu, a reinterpretation of a kyphi, or an Egyptian incense; Artaban, the royal perfume of Ancient Rome; and Les Nuits, the perfume of French novelist George Sand.

To bring these fragrances back to life, the duo paired ancient recipes and artifacts with state-of-the-art technology. Le Guérer provided Ropion with the actual formulas for the Ancient Egyptian and Roman perfumes, as well as the dregs of an old vial of Sand’s scent. The perfumes were precisely recreated with a modern approach, replacing ingredients no longer compliant with today’s safety regulations while maintaining each scent’s complexity, depth, and integrity. The distinct collection unearths fragrances once feared lost to time—and offers a new generation the chance to create their own olfactory portal to the past.

Installed on the eighth level of The Shed and realized with the support of Maestro Dobel Tequila, the Californian artist’s wondrous new installation combines materials old and new to embody circularity and teardrops from the haunting tale of “la llorona.”

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: ektor garcia, 37, New York.

Title of work: la llorona (2023).

Where to see it: Frieze New York at The Shed until May 21.

Three words to describe it: Tears, solid, porous.

What was on your mind at the time: The circular nature of my work, my devotion to nature and the natural, and how the la llorona legend has haunted me over the years and come up again and again in my work and life. I recently gave a visiting artist talk at UCLA and Parsons, where I shared slides from my time in Chicago over the years, and noticed how my body is always drawn to bodies of water like la llorona.

I recently went to MoMA to see Black Power Naps by Navild Acosta and Sosa. I’ve heard of it for so long, and in their La Biblioteca Is Open installation I noticed a Gloria Anzaldúa children’s book titled Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita Y La Llorona. As soon as I opened it, several pages spilled out onto the floor. I laughed at this and felt it was surprisingly related to my work and investigation of the myth of la llorona.

Making friendship bracelets at summer camp sparked a lifelong interest in and “borderline obsession” with textiles and fiber crafts for William Storms, who taps into the meditative quality of weaving to create in-demand home textiles for the likes of Sunbrella, West Elm, and Crypton Fabrics. An avid traveler, his interest in weaving is intrinsically tied to the language associated with craft—and the communities from which each technique or textile comes from.

For the first time since the Venice Biennale established an architecture event in 1980, its main exhibitions will focus on Africa and the African Diaspora. That’s largely thanks to Ghanaian-Scottish architect and academic Lesley Lokko, who was tapped to curate this year’s edition. Much like the Diaspora, which she describes as “that fluid and enmeshed culture of people of African descent that now straddles the globe,” Lokko’s career has been defined by inhabiting—and navigating—various worlds.

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