Seiji Okuda: Handmade Japanese Tableware and How to Choose It

Most of what comes out of Shiga, Japan under the name Seiji Okuda arrives in pairs. A form is made at one height, then made again slightly taller, and the two are sold as separate pieces. Seiji Okuda pottery is therefore not really a catalogue of shapes; it is a catalogue of sizes, and the gaps between them are small enough that a buyer looking at photographs alone will not see the decision being asked of them.

The flexed bowl: 5.6cm against 6.2cm

The grey bowl above is the smaller of the two flexed bowls and stands 5.6cm. Its partner stands 6.2cm. On paper that is nothing. In the hand it is the line between a bowl you cradle in the fingers of one hand and a bowl that wants the palm underneath it. The wall is glazed in a soft grey that pools slightly where the flexing pushes the rim out of true, so the colour is never quite even around the circumference, and the eye follows the wave instead of the circle. If you serve small portions to be held while standing at a counter, take the lower one. If the bowl will sit on a table and be reached into, the taller one keeps more of the contents out of sight and off the cloth.

Rice bowls: four heights within eight millimetres of each other

The rice bowls repeat the same logic twice over. One pair stands 6.7cm and 7.2cm; another, finished in grey ash, stands 6.8cm and 7.4cm. Read as a list this looks like indecision. Used, it is the difference between a bowl that empties in four mouthfuls and one that empties in six, which over a week is the whole question of portion size answered by the vessel rather than by the person holding it. There is a second effect that matters more than volume: a taller wall keeps steam inside longer, so the last mouthful arrives warmer. Pick the lower height for anyone who eats lightly, the taller for anyone who refills.

The shallow bowl, at 14cm across and 4.8cm deep

Two pieces break the pattern by spreading instead of rising. The shallow bowls measure 14cm and 4.8cm, with a grey ash version at 5.2cm, and the proportion changes what the bowl can do. At that width against that depth, food is presented rather than contained. Sauce runs to the middle and stays there. A shallow bowl of this shape is the one to reach for when what is being served has to be seen, and the poor choice when it has to be carried across a room.

The donburi is the outlier

The donburi above is the small one of its pair, at 13.2cm and 7.3cm. The large donburi measures 15.2cm and 7.5cm. Almost all of the growth between them is in the first number, and the second barely moves, which tells you what a donburi is for. It gains width, not depth. A deep narrow vessel holds the same volume but buries the surface of the food; a wide one keeps everything in view and gives chopsticks room to work at the edge. The ash glaze here settles darker where the wall turns toward the foot, so the inside reads lighter than the outside and the contents sit against a pale ground.

The piece that is not a bowl

The white cup above is the single tumbler in the group, and it is worth noting because it shows the same clay treated a different way. A layer of white slip goes over the body before the ash glaze, so the surface comes up pale and slightly matte rather than glassy, and the wall stays warm to the touch for as long as the drink inside it does. A cup with no handle sets its own temperature limit, which is a feature rather than a fault: you cannot hold it if the contents are too hot to drink. Straight-sided, unhandled, it is the piece in this group that gets used most often and thought about least.

Ceramic, and what it asks of you

All of it is pottery rather than porcelain, and the difference shows up in weight and in temperature. A ceramic body is more open, so it holds heat longer and feels heavier for its size, and it takes on the temperature of what it carries instead of resisting it. That is why these bowls are pleasant in the hand with something hot and unremarkable with something cold. Wash by hand, dry before stacking, and expect the glaze surface to gain a faint depth over years of use.

Which to buy first

Buy one height, live with it for a month, then buy the other. Two bowls that differ by a few millimetres are genuinely two different tools, but only after you have learned which end of the range you actually reach for. The full range sits in the Seiji Okuda collection, the rice and flexed forms under bowls, and the wide deep forms under donburi.