Whatever you’re doing, the landscape is changing around you. You could be a blacksmith in 2026 or in 1926. Even if you’re using the same materials in the same kind of forge, something would be different, from material accessibility and evolutions in technology to design and other cultural forces. The world becomes contemporary, so craft becomes contemporary.

Ceramicist Sharif Bey is the winner of the first-ever Spector Craft Prize

Monocle November 2026