The Low Bowl, Now Available

Four Versions to Get It Right

The Low Bowl started as a request we kept getting, in emails, in comments, at the one market stall we still do twice a year. People wanted something wider than our standard bowl, shallow enough to serve from, but still substantial enough to hold its own on a table next to plates and glasses. It sounded simple. It took four versions to get right.

The first attempt was too shallow. It looked good empty and useless full, the sides too low to hold anything with sauce or dressing without risking the table. The second was closer but the base was too narrow for the width of the rim, so the whole piece felt top heavy in the hand, unstable in a way that had nothing to do with how it actually sat on a surface. It just felt wrong to pick up, and that mattered more than we expected going in.

By the third version we had the proportions closer, 23cm across, 7cm deep, but the walls were too thick for the size. A bowl that wide with walls that heavy stops being something you reach for daily and becomes something you display instead, which was the opposite of what we wanted. We thinned the walls by nearly two millimeters on the fourth pass and the whole object changed. Lighter in the hand, easier to lift with food in it, still steady on the table.

What Changed At 24cm

At 24cm across and 6cm deep, the final version sits lower and wider than most of what we make. The extra surface area changes how it gets used. It works for a salad brought straight to the table, for bread, for whatever needs to be seen and reached into at once, not just stored in a cupboard between meals.

Each one is hand thrown, so the width varies slightly piece to piece, by a few millimeters at most. We don’t correct for this in production. It’s the clearest sign the bowl was made on a wheel and not pulled from a mold, and it means no two are ever quite the same, even from the same batch, even fired side by side in the same kiln load.

Available now in our two standard glazes, stone and ash. Same clay body, same two firings, same process as everything else we make. Just a different shape for a different part of the table, and one that took longer to get right than we expected when the first request came in.

Why We’re Not Smoothing The Edges

A few of the early testers ended up keeping their prototype instead of returning it for the final batch, seams and slightly uneven rim included. One of them told us later that a bowl with no story behind it is just a container, and the ones with a visible history of being made by hand are the ones that actually get used instead of shelved. That comment stuck with us more than we expected it to, and it’s part of why we’re not planning to smooth out the small variations in future batches either.