Yoshihei Kato Pottery: One Peony

The quickest way into Yoshihei Kato pottery is to follow a single motif. The peony turns up again and again across this maker's work, and watching what happens to it as the shape beneath it changes teaches you more than any list of forms would.

On a flat face the peony gets the whole stage

Start with the green plate above. The wall is 2.6cm, low enough that the eye takes in the entire face at once, and the peony is drawn in white slip across a green ground. Nothing interrupts it. Whatever you serve will sit on top of the drawing, so the plate is at its best with a small portion placed off-centre, leaving the flower to fill the rest.

White on green is also the highest-contrast pairing this maker uses. If you own one piece from this workshop and want it to be recognisable across a room, it should be this one.

On a curved wall the peony gets cropped

Move the same flower onto a rice bowl and the geometry does something to it. The bowl below is 6cm deep, hand-painted with a peony, and from any one viewing angle you see perhaps half the drawing. The rest is around the curve.

That is not a compromise. A pattern you cannot see all of is a pattern that rewards being turned in the hand, and a rice bowl is held and turned at every meal. The plate is looked at. The bowl is handled. The same flower is doing two different jobs.

A wreath solves the problem the curve creates

There is a third answer. On the yellow bowl below, the flowers are arranged as a wreath running around the piece rather than as one bloom placed on it. The bowl is 9cm across the mouth and 3.1cm high, so it is wide and low, and a continuous band suits that proportion exactly.

With a wreath there is no wrong side and no correct orientation on the table. You put the bowl down and it is already right. For a piece that gets moved between people during a meal, that is worth more than a single striking image would be.

Choosing between the three

Decide by how the piece will be used rather than by which drawing you like most in a photograph.

• Looked at from above, used for something dry — take the flat form near 2.6cm.
• Held at every meal — take the bowl near 6cm, and expect to discover parts of the pattern for weeks.
• Passed around, used for something shared — take the wide low bowl near 3.1cm, where the band reads from any side.

Why the same motif is worth repeating

Buying three pieces with one motif is a different decision from buying three unrelated pieces. The peony gives the group an obvious relationship, so the table looks composed even when the shapes vary in size. It also lets you add to the set later without matching anything exactly. The motif does the matching for you.

Where to start

The Yoshihei Kato collection shows how far the motif travels. To see the flat and the curved treatment side by side, put a round plate in white slip next to a yellow bowl with a wreath.