Singaporean bookbinder Adelene Koh is finalist for Loewe Foundation Craft Prize

SINGAPORE – Singaporean bookbinder Adelene Koh has been announced as a finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, an annual award issued by the offshoot foundation of Spanish fashion house Loewe.

The 43-year-old is the second Singaporean to make the shortlist of the international prize for excellence in contemporary craft that launched in 2016, after multidisciplinary artist Ashley Yeo in 2018.

Koh’s 2025 work, titled Endless, is one of 30 selected from more than 5,100 submissions by artists from 133 countries and regions.

What appears to be a roll of paper held together by a melange of brightly coloured threads is really an expanded, circular and, therefore, endless “endband” – the curved bands applied to the top and bottom of a book’s spine.

Sewn around a single aluminium wire core, Koh employs embroidery threads and the front bead method: an English style of endband sewing from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The 120mm by 120mm by 55mm work – along with the entire shortlist spanning ceramics, woodwork, textiles, furniture, glass, metal, jewellery and lacquer work – will be displayed at the National Gallery Singapore from May 13 to June 14.

This is the first time the craft prize will be presented in South-east Asia. The winner of the €50,000 (S$74,750) prize will be announced at the gallery on May 12. Two special mentions will receive €5,000 each.

In a statement on Feb 23, Loewe Foundation president Sheila Loewe, from the fifth generation of the founding Loewe family, said: “Bringing this exhibition to Singapore reflects the global dialogue at the heart of the prize and our ongoing commitment to supporting artists at pivotal moments in their careers.”

Previous iterations of the prize have been shown at The Design Museum in London (2018); the late American artist Isamu Noguchi’s indoor stone garden Heaven at the Sogetsu Kaikan in Tokyo (2019); Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2024); and Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid (2025).

The 2026 edition – the ninth after a hiatus in 2020 – marks the first time Loewe’s creative directors, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, will sit on the jury. The brand is known for elite and creative craftsmanship, beginning as a collective craft workshop in 1846.

The creative heads will be joined by leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, journalism, criticism and museum curatorship, said the foundation.

In their deliberations for the shortlist, the panel sought to identify the most outstanding works in terms of technical accomplishment, skill, innovation and artistic vision.

A graduate of Lasalle College of the Arts, Koh holds a master’s degree in conservation of cultural relics from Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan. Her thesis used mechanical science to investigate the structural issue of sagging in textbooks.

She trained as a fine bookbinder in London and Tokyo, according to information from her bookbinding site dddots.

In 2017, she received her first international bookbinding prize in the Open Set Competition held by the American Academy of Bookbinding. Her books have been exhibited in Britain, the United States, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

She said: “I was very shocked when I first received the news about being named a finalist. I could not believe that my craft, being so niche, would be selected among all the other craft genres.

“The Craft Prize means everything to me, it has given me a sense of validation and affirms that the passion for my craft has gained recognition on an international level.”