Yanco Stone Art Collection

Stone Art is Yanco's gray melamine line — 24 items, all in one color, with no white or black option. It is the most bowl-weighted pattern in the melamine catalog: fourteen of the twenty-four pieces are bowls, with two sauce dishes, four flat platters and four round plates making up the rest. If you are furnishing a menu that plates mostly into bowls — grain bowls, noodles, braises, shared sides — this is the line that will not leave you buying half the range from somewhere else.

What's in the 24-piece Stone Art line

• Round plates with upright rim — 6", 8", 10" and 12"
• Rectangular platters — four sizes, starting at 10-1/4" x 6-3/4" and rising through 12-1/4", 14-3/8" and a top size of 16" x 12"
• Bowl with ear — 9-1/8" x 7-1/2" at 25 oz
• Mediterranean bowl — 10-3/4" at 13 oz; soup/pasta bowl — 11-1/2" at 20 oz
• Ramen bowl — 8-3/4" at 35 oz; deep bowl — 7-3/4" at 32 oz
• Salad bowls — 8-1/2" at 30 oz, 8" at 30 oz and 7-1/2" at 16 oz
• Smaller bowls — 6-7/8" at 30 oz, 6-1/2" at 16 oz, 6-1/4" at 12 oz, 5-3/4" at 24 oz, and a 5" rice bowl at 12 oz
• Dessert bowl — 9-1/8" at 10 oz; sauce dishes — 3-1/4" at 4 oz and 3-1/4" at 2 oz

Diameter does not predict capacity here

The bowl set is worth reading carefully, because Stone Art uses depth as its main variable. Three bowls hold 30 oz at three different diameters: the wide, shallow ST-408 (8-1/2" x 1-1/2"), the ST-308 (8" x 2"), and the tall, narrow ST-307 (6-7/8" x 2-1/2"). Same portion, three very different presentations and three different footprints on a crowded pass. The same pattern repeats at 16 oz between the ST-407 (7-1/2" x 1-1/4") and the ST-3106 (6-1/2" x 1-1/2"). Specify by height as well as diameter or you will order the wrong one.

The distinctive pieces sit above that set: the ST-709 bowl with ear (25 oz) carries a projecting tab, the "ear" of the name, on one side; the ST-508 ramen bowl (35 oz) is the deepest piece in the line; the ST-610 Mediterranean bowl and ST-511 soup/pasta bowl are the two wide, low shapes for plated pasta and composed bowls.

Platters, plates, and how it compares to Optimum

The four platters climb to a 16" x 12" ST-216, the largest flat piece in this pattern and bigger than anything the related Optimum line offers. Beneath it the ST-214, ST-212 and ST-210 step down in even increments. The round plates — ST-106 (6"), ST-108 (8"), ST-110 (10") and ST-112 (12") — all carry a rim that stands up rather than rolling out, which keeps a sauced portion inside the plate. Those plates, those three smaller platters, the Mediterranean and soup/pasta bowls, the dessert bowl, the bowl with ear and the 2 oz sauce dish all have dimensionally identical counterparts in the Optimum line; the finish is the only difference, so the two patterns can be run together on one tabletop or mixed by course.

Stone Art is one entry in the full Yanco range. Its closest relative is the Optimum collection, which shares the tooling in a white-and-brown two-tone body; for another single-tone dark melamine with a different shape vocabulary, look at Black Pearl. Gray is hard to judge from a photograph, so ask us for a sample piece before you commit a full service: sales@nishienterprise.com or (732) 790-0199.