Nesting Mixing Bowls — Sehyoung Hamjong

The Nesting Mixing Bowls family — mixing bowls and prep bowls with lids, rendered as a set

Product design, market research, CAD modeling, rendering, 3D printing, mold making & casting

01Research — what makes a mixing bowl iconic

Research covered six popular mixing-bowl brands: KitchenAid, Williams-Sonoma, All-Clad, Cuisinart, OXO, and Norpro. Their bowls were compared for volume capacity, styling, and stability, which showed the common sizes a new set needed to cover and the shapes the category is built on: the rounded band, the base, the curved lip.

Mixing bowl average sizes across six brands — donut chart from 1 quart to 5 quarts

Bowl silhouettes survey with key characteristics — rounded raised band, base, curved lip

The capacity survey across six brands, and the silhouette survey of the category.

Interaction studies looked at how a whisk and a hand mixer meet the bowl: upright for beating, tilted for folding. Those angles set the wall angle, the depth, and how stable the bowl is when held at a slant.

Tool interaction studies — whisk and hand mixer shown upright and tilted in bowl sections — Whisk and hand-mixer studies, upright and tilted. These set the wall angle and depth.

02Form development

Concept sketching looked for a design language that matched Tramontina's brand: a shape that stands out from the category while staying practical and useful. The sketches explored storage, stackability, and stability.

Sketch wall — shape survey and iconic shape studies pinned above concept sketches

Sketch wall — ring and stub concept threads with tagged sticky notes

Sketch wall — lid and bottom concept sketches — The concept wall — ring, stub, lids, and bottoms. Each thread is a different approach to grip, pouring, and storage.

Refined concept silhouettes — four bowl profiles with pour spout and non-slip base

Early CAD concept — nested set with red lids

After evaluating the concepts and thinking about manufacturability, the bowls were refined to a continuous silhouette with a pour-friendly rim. The storage lids were shaped to complement the smooth simplicity of the bowls and friction-fit to them. The lids also double as a non-slip mat, with a flat area matched to the base circumference of each bowl.

03Nesting geometry

The bowls are designed as a nesting set, with enough room to store the set with the lids attached when putting them away. Five profiles were modeled and sectioned in CAD to compare how the bowls seat into each other and how tall the stack grows with the lids on.

Four of five nesting geometry studies — CAD section views of the nested set — Section studies — the five profiles compared for seating, stack height, and wall consistency.

1:1 scale line drawing of the nested stack — The chosen profile, drafted at 1:1.

04The resolved design

The resolved bowl — deep red body with a soft-touch black lid

Silicone lids — a flexible silicone lid with a wide rim seals each bowl for storage.
Bowls seat on their lids — placed under the bowl, the lid becomes a non-slip base that keeps the bowl planted while mixing.
Scalable silhouette — the same profile scales from the large mixing bowls down to the small prep bowls.

The lid — top view showing the wide soft rim

Nested, stacked, and seated on their lids.

The shape of the base allows the bowls to be manipulated and rolled at an angle as needed. The lid's simplicity, with its raised portions, is visually sleek and functional when pulling it off the bowl. The flat areas of the lid are intentionally sized to match the bowl and allow stable stacking.

05Prototyping — making it real

A full-scale bowl was 3D printed, then sanded, primed, and spray-painted to a production-level gloss.

Bowl prototype sequence — 3D print sanded, primed, spray-painted, and held finished — Print, sand, prime, paint — a full-scale bowl finished by hand.

The lid had to flex like a production part, so it was cast in silicone instead of printed. I built a mold from a 3D printed lid, degassed the silicone under vacuum, and cast flexible lids from two-part molds — prototypes that could be stretched, seated, and peeled.

Mold-making sequence — acrylic mold box, vacuum degassing, cured two-part silicone molds, cast lid — Mold making — acrylic boxes, vacuum degassing, two-part silicone molds, and the first casts.

Cast lid prototypes sectioned for finish tests — matte and gloss halves compared — Finish tests — cast lids compared, matte against gloss.

Two bowls seated on their inverted lids, one upright and one tilted