A CLOSER LOOK HOME
ANATOMY OF A DESIGN
UNILLOY CAST IRON POT
Jay Patel, founder of The Japanese Home, on an elegant and highly functional piece of cast iron cookware
The genesis I love cooking and having lived in Japan for several years I came to really appreciate the beauty and utility of their cookware. I started selling Japanese knives 25 years ago. Back then, getting Japanese makers to use their skill to create knives for customers in the West was difficult. Now the landscape is very different. In the UK, the Japanese knife has become a byword for quality. I thought the time had come to look at another range of products to help the cook in the kitchen, and I chose cast iron cookware. I approached the Japan External Trade Organisation and asked to be introduced to small ironworks in Japan. They put me in contact with a company called Unilloy, which been in the same family for about eight generations and is run by a young, innovative and forward-looking son. We arranged a meeting and we spoke about my ideas. The challenge The main problem with cast iron pots is weight – cast iron is heavy. It works fantastically
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well on induction, is wonderful at retaining and distributing heat but it’s just too heavy, especially when full of food. I also saw other issues with most cast iron pots. You always need oven mitts to move them, because the handles stay so hot, but the space in the handles is never large enough to fit the mitt securely, so they always feel a bit unsteady when full. Another problem comes when you have to take the lid off to stir – there is invariably nowhere to put it down and the condensation on the inside drips everywhere. The process These are Unilloy products – my role was that of a consultant, but the final decisions were theirs. They approached Komin Yamada, one of the best industrial designers in the world, who commands the same level of respect in Japan as Philippe Starck does in the West. Having him agree to design the piece is a huge honour. The design was strongly informed by the manufacturing process. Instead of casting
the pots in sand, as is usual, these pots are cast in stone. This allows you to cast thinner layers, while retaining all the qualities of cast iron. You can also cast with greater precision because stone moulds don’t distort with heat or humidity. The resulting pot is half the weight of a traditional cast iron pot of the same size. The design Each handle has a downward curve. Not too much but enough to give it the feel of a hook, which means there’s less chance of your hand slipping. Yamada also made the holes in the handles large. The combination of the narrow width of the band and the size of the hole means the handles dissipate heat very quickly, while the body of the pot stays hot, and it also makes it easier to get a secure grip when carrying the pot. The handle on the lid is designed to fits neatly into the hole in the side handles in such a way that you have somewhere to put the lid while stirring your food, and any
