Avocado Bowls: Sage Green, Playful, and Made for Dips

There is a category of object that is designed to be funny and turns out to be useless: the novelty mug that cannot be washed, the shaped plate that holds nothing, the thing you buy for the photograph and give away by the end of the year.

The Avocado Bowls are not that. They are shaped like half an avocado, in a soft sage green with a darker rim, twelve centimetres long — and they are genuinely one of the more useful small bowls in a kitchen, which is the real surprise.

The shape

The form is a shallow oval, scooped like the inside of the fruit, with a rim that is darker than the body and a glossy finish that catches whatever light is in the room. The sage green is muted enough that it reads as a colour rather than a joke.

It is not a deep bowl. It is a shallow one, which is why it works: it holds a dip without hiding it, it holds makhana without crushing it, and it holds a serving of anything you want to see. Depth is not always a virtue in a bowl. Sometimes it is a way of losing the food.

Sage green, and what it does for a table

Sage is the most restful colour in the kitchen. It does not compete with food the way red does, it does not disappear the way white does, and it looks particularly good next to wood, linen and brass.

It is also a colour that carries a season. Served on a table in monsoon light, sage looks like something that was picked rather than bought. Next to the deep blue of a pomegranate bowl, it makes a table feel composed without appearing arranged.

Dips, and the case for a shallow bowl

Guacamole is the obvious answer, and it is a good one — a bowl whose shape tells you what goes in it is a small piece of design pleasure. But the shape works for every dip: hummus, hung curd with herbs, a chutney, a mint yoghurt, a dip made from whatever was in the fridge at six in the evening.

The shallow depth means the dip is visible. A deep bowl of dip is a leap of faith. A shallow one is an invitation, because you can see what you are getting before you commit a cracker to it.

Beyond dips

Makhana, roasted chana, peanuts, olives, the small bowl of namkeen that goes out before dinner. A portion of berries. A child's serving of anything. Chopped fruit, which looks better in a coloured bowl than on a plate.

Then the second life: earrings, hair pins, seeds, the keys to a second lock, the small objects that accumulate on a dresser and need somewhere to be.

Care

Hand-glazed stoneware, fired twice, dishwasher-safe. Do not stack them inside each other, and do not put a hot pan next to a cold bowl. Both of those rules apply to every good ceramic, and neither takes any effort to keep.

The point

A home is allowed to be playful in small doses. The trick is to be playful in things that work — objects that make you smile once and are useful fifty times a day. A sage green avocado bowl is a joke you keep using, which is the only kind of joke worth having in a kitchen.

See the collection.