The Yunomi

When I started making things out of clay I didn't really know what a yunomi was, but I liked drinking coffee from handleless cups (some rather soulless ones in retrospect) and wanted to make the best version of one of those I could conceive. Cups without handles, though? They’re a bit, "Garlic? Bread?!" for a certain generation. I have to explain to enquirers at markets quite frequently what could possibly be good about them. I’ve had, “Do you actually know how to make handles…?” before now. But the more I explain it, the stronger my case becomes, to the point where I can start to hear my argument heading towards this:

"Why would anyone want to drink a drink that necessitates a handle on their cup? If you burn your hand on the cup, that's a warning there that you're either about to burn your mouth or, at the very least, the taste experience is going to be inferior if you’re drinking at that heat." 

The reality is obvious that not everyone needs to be given unsolicited beverage guidance from a trader as they stroll through a marketplace - I would just lose customers and friends if I started spouting like that, but there’s some logic to the argument. More on that in a minute…

My pursuit of the most harmonious yunomi shape I could make was entirely selfish. I just wanted (and still do) to make things I am most happy to use, whatever the vessel. I don't make anything for the imagined tastes and ideals of others - I did that over and over when I played and recorded music for a living because sometimes that's just what you have to do in that position (my music taste wasn’t always relevant to the client’s), but I desperately wanted to get away from that feeling of “faking it” as I moved into pottery. Sincerity and authenticity in creative output feels a lot better. When I first sat alone at a pottery wheel early one evening about a year and a half ago, my instruction to myself was "You're not going home until you've made a cup of some kind, no handle required". A few hours later (1am-ish) I had bullied the walls up on something that would hold a coffee but had fairly ugly, squat proportions, weighed a crazy amount for it's diminutive stature and, as it turned out, would fire down to an annoying size that would only hold enough milk for a viciously pokey flat white. But despite those shortcomings, my path was set and from that day to this, my main constant has been the pursuit of the perfect yunomi with which to drink my favourite coffee type - the flat white.

I didn't actually know they were called yunomi at first. For a while I thought the shape I was aiming for was called a "chawan" - I’d only done a bit of superficial reading/browsing around the origins of these shapes, but it turned out chawan are actually the bigger ceremonial bowls the Japanese use mainly for matcha green tea (rice sometimes too). Yunomi are the cups that green tea (often sencha) is casually drunk from on a day-to-day basis. Size and proportions vary, often 6-9cm in diameter at the rim and a similar range in height, and a capacity of around 90 to 180ml is common. Teapot brewing methods for green tea often use a temperature of around 70C and although this is hotter than steamed milk for a flat white (55-60C), it still doesn’t hurt your hands - the same vessel suits both uses. That's a really good size for making a flat white as the 60ml of a double espresso combined with 100-120ml milk that a lot of people go for fits neatly in there. Pour-over methods for coffee such as using the popular Hario V60 have a recommended brewing temperature of 92C but the ideal drinking temperature at which the flavours can all sing in harmony is around 60C so again, the yunomi works for this method. The flat white and the pour-over filter coffee (V60, Chemex, Kalita Wave et al) are at the core of the “third-wave” coffee movement and the whole culture surrounding elevated coffee appreciation has been quite an explosion. Some people hate it - they were raised on scalding hot mugs of Nescafe, they bloody love it, and if you give ‘em a flat white they’ll take it back to the counter and tell the barista to heat it up properly and stick another sugar in it. Those people need a handle on their mug. And this is where the (my…) snobbery clearly kicks in. If you’re engaged in the brewing to the point where you care about temperatures, timings, provenance and tasting notes, then it’s going to follow that you care about the receptacle you drink it from. Or I feel it should follow. Which brings me back to trying to make the most ergonomically and aesthetically pleasing yunomi I can. The profile of the rim drastically affects the mouth-feel in the way it presents to the lips, the texture of the glaze on the outside affects hand-feel and heat transfer, the raw clay I leave around the base and foot ring can convey cleanness or earthiness depending on the clay body used. The whole human interaction with the vessel is, to me, a vital part of the journey that started with a coffee plant thousands of miles away. I love engaging with flavour, both in the cup and in the grinder - taking a deep noseful of a new and exciting roast is an exhilarating moment that I savour intensely. (The pottery studio has new neighbours as of last month - Full Court Press Roastery - and they have been bringing forth the most exciting flavour profiles I’ve ever experienced.)

I have noticed that some people examine my yunomi at markets in a way that I have real admiration for - they cradle one in their hands and pause, sometimes close their eyes for a second, even lift it towards their chin a little. They feel every contour - the rim, the foot ring, the weight in their hands, the thickness of the walls. The level of scrutiny is almost intimidating, but ultimately I love how engaged these people are with this object they are considering for inclusion in their life - like they’re testing to see if they could have a serious relationship with it. When I see this level of care, I feel a strong responsibility to make the best and most harmonious forms I can. If they are feeling the rim profile, I don't want the rim on my yunomi to just be whatever happened to come off the wheel that day without me paying due attention - I want it to have intent, to be sculpted as pleasingly as I can make it, to have attributes that I have arrived at through experimentation, not chance. There is danger here obviously - where does the potter stop trying to control every facet of the piece? Where can they comfortably let the flow of the hands and the glaze in the fire of the kiln take over or at least play their part? My instinct is to sculpt the ergonomics as well as I can with my full attention to detail then hand over a certain amount of the colour and texture work to the kiln. And ultimately, if the kiln goes too far, I have to retain the power of veto at the other end of the process - it doesn't have to go out there for sale. The shelves in my kitchen at home are well populated with ergonomic successes that the kiln went a bit too crazy on!

I imagine I will keep making yunomi for the rest of my pottery life and that the forms I make will carry with them the marks of my progress (or stagnation). People in jazz say that about improvisers playing over a 12 bar blues - it should never bore a musician to play on that simple chord progression, and they should be able to express their point in the musical journey by simply improvising on that form. I vaguely remember the anecdotal retelling of this idea to me came packaged with some kind of, “If you’re tired of playing a blues, you’re tired of life” maxim. Although those overly neat wisdoms can be annoying, I didn’t mind this one and it rang true. The same feels it could well be true of making yunomi. It also brings to mind the format constraints of LP album art and the way an artist’s vision can do so much within those confines. Many creative makers find they only flourish once a few parameters are set in place and this is certainly something I always found when I made my own music and continue to find in pottery. However it pans out, I’m going to keep the humble yunomi at the centre of my output for as long as they make me as happy as they currently do.