Ceramics is one of the oldest materials in the history of craft. And paper, by definition, does not survive fire. Yet Korean artist Jongjin Park, in his latest body of work, Strata of Illusion, decided to bring the two together — and the result earned him the Loewe Craft Prize 2026.

Strata of Illusion takes the form of a rectangle open at the top, with one side gently giving way downward, as though the weight of the layers is making itself felt. The surface is composed of thousands of sheets of recycled paper towels — made from repurposed milk cartons — dipped in watered-down ceramic slip, layered and fired in a kiln. The visual reference is geological: sedimentary rock sections, strata that seem to require millennia to form, yet here emerge from a slow and precisely controlled craft process.

What makes Park’s work conceptually precise is the way it redefines fragility. Before firing, the slip-soaked paper is not fragile in the way traditional unfired ceramics are: it is flexible, still malleable, a state of possibility in which form, pattern and colour can be actively shaped. After the kiln, that lightness solidifies into something monumental, no longer betraying its origin. Thinness and density, flexibility and rigidity — apparently opposing values that coexist within a single structure.

Park is a professor of Craft & Collectible Design at Seoul Women’s University and works from his base in Seoul. His is an approach that does not seek to move beyond ceramics as a medium, but to expand it by finding intersections with other materials — in this case, the most everyday and the most perishable one possible.