Hitoshi Kato: Handmade Japanese Tableware and How to Choose It

Hitoshi Kato works in Gifu, Japan, mostly in pottery (ceramic) rather than porcelain, and the surfaces show it: slip, glaze, and faceting are all used to change how light sits on a piece, rather than relying on painted decoration. Because the shapes range from a small sake cup to a rectangular plate 18.7cm long, the more useful question when choosing a piece is not "which looks best" but "what does this size and finish actually do at the table."

This small cup is a clear example of what faceting does. The white slip is applied first, then the sides are cut into flat facets before the second firing, so the surface catches light unevenly instead of showing one smooth curve. In the hand, those facets also give your fingers something to register against, which matters more on a small cup than it would on a plate you never actually grip.

Where the pieces come from and what they are

Every current piece is from Gifu, Japan. Large Plate is the biggest category by count, with Medium Plate close behind, and smaller numbers of Sake Cup (Guinomi), Medium Bowl, Soup Cup, Chopstick Rest, Rectangular Plate, Donburi Bowl, and Small Bowl filling out the rest. That spread means Hitoshi Kato's range covers a full place setting rather than one specialty—plates for serving, bowls for rice or soup, cups for sake, and a chopstick rest to finish it.

Sizes vary by category more than within it. The chopstick rest measures a compact 4.8cm by 4cm by 1.8cm, small enough to sit under a single pair of chopsticks without crowding the rest of the setting. A donburi bowl runs 16.9cm across and 7.9cm tall, deep enough to hold a full rice-bowl meal rather than a side portion.

Choosing by glaze and material

Most pieces are Japanese pottery (ceramic) or pottery (ceramic), with a single porcelain piece in the current lineup. The ruri glaze that appears across several of the oval plates and bowls pools into a deeper blue wherever it runs thicker—along a rim, inside a ribbed groove—so a ribbed or fluted piece in ruri glaze will show more color variation across its surface than a flat one.

This large ribbed oval plate carries that ruri glaze over cut ribs, with a rim height of 3cm—enough to keep sauce or juice from a main dish contained without turning the plate into a bowl. Run a finger along the ribs and you can feel where the glaze has pooled thicker in each groove, which is the same effect described above, just visible up close.

Sizing plates and bowls to how you serve

The oval plates come in three sizes with rim heights of 2.4cm, 2.6cm, and 3cm—small, medium, and large in that order—so the choice mostly comes down to portion size rather than a difference in finish. The ribbed flat bowls follow a similar small-to-medium split, at 4.6cm and 5.5cm. A rinka (lobed-rim) oval bowl in ruri glaze reaches 12.6cm, which puts it closer to a serving piece than an individual one.

The rectangular plate is the outlier in the lineup at 18.7cm by 9.9cm by 2cm—long and narrow rather than round, and shallow enough at 2cm that it reads as a serving platform rather than a dish with sides. It carries the same ruri glaze as the oval pieces, so if you are building a set around that finish, this is the piece that breaks the round-plate pattern.

Where to start

For a first piece, the medium oval plate at 2.6cm or the large ribbed oval plate at 3cm both work as an everyday size without committing to the largest pieces in the range. If you want to build toward a full setting, add the sake cup and chopstick rest once you know how the ruri glaze looks against what you already own. Browse the full range in the Hitoshi Kato collection, or go directly to Large Plate, Medium Plate, Medium Bowl, and Small Bowl.