# A pot drawn beside bowls that keep getting smaller > A linocut pot on a single burner sits beside a row of bowls, each one smaller than the last — the portion divided further every time, with no number anywhere saying so. August 22, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-pot-stretched-for-one-more-bowl A pot sits on a single burner, drawn three-quarter on in chunky linocut lines. A ladle rests across its rim, a thin curl of steam rising off it. Beside the pot, a row of bowls: each one smaller than the one before it, the portion inside divided further every time. Nobody's written how many are eating tonight. The bowls already answered that. ## Why is the row of bowls doing more work than the pot? Because the pot is fixed — one size, one burner — and the bowls are the part of the scene that changes. A pot says one thing: this much food exists. It's the bowls, getting smaller down the row, that say what happens to that fixed amount when there's one more person to feed than there was food for. The pot is the constant; the bowls are the variable, and a variable drawn in a descending row reads faster than any other way of showing division. ## Why draw the portion shrinking instead of printing a number? Because a number states a fact and a shrinking row shows a decision being made, bowl by bowl, in real time. A count printed on the shirt — a serving size, a ratio, a ration figure — would read as a label stuck onto the scene from outside it. A row of bowls that simply get smaller reads as something that happened at the stove, a ladle doing the dividing rather than a policy. It's the same reason [a coordinate pair reads as a real place rather than a graphic](/stories/numbers-as-a-design) — specificity that's shown rather than stated carries more weight, and here the showing is the whole print. ## What's the actual choice in commissioning a scene like this? How many bowls, and what's cooking — the two details that turn a generic pot into a specific evening. A single pot on a burner is a plain enough scene that it needs one or two concrete details to stop being generic: what's actually in the pot, how far the row of bowls runs, whether the last bowl is barely a spoonful or still a proper share. Those choices are the entire design; the linocut style and the composition do the rest without needing text anywhere in the print. ## Does a scene like this need anyone's permission? No — a pot, a ladle and a row of bowls belong to nobody, and none of it references a real product, brand or person. The one place permission would matter is if the cookware itself were drawn as somebody's actual product — a specific manufacturer's pot, a branded burner. Nothing here does that, and an invented, unbranded kitchen is the stronger version anyway: it reads as any kitchen doing this, rather than one company's advert for scarcity. ## Does the same shrinking-row idea work outside a kitchen? Anywhere one fixed thing gets divided further each time it's asked to stretch. A jug beside a row of cups, each poured a little thinner than the last. A loaf beside slices getting narrower toward the end of it. A tin beside a row of smaller tins, one already scraped clean. The mechanism repeats wherever a source and its portions can sit in the same frame at the same time — one item that doesn't change, and a series that does. ## Isn't a shrinking bowl a complaint rather than an ordinary evening? It reads as neither — it's a fact about the pot, drawn plainly, the same way the shirt draws a ladle or a burner. The scene isn't staged for sympathy and it isn't making an argument about anything beyond the frame: it's what dividing a fixed amount of food actually looks like when you draw it plainly rather than describe it. Most evenings with a stove involve some version of this arithmetic; showing it directly is closer to how it actually happens than skipping past it to a table already set. ## Does it print well? Yes — a linocut's chunky, carved-edge lines are built for exactly this: bold flat shapes with no fine detail to lose. Two inks carry it cleanly — black for the pot and the row of bowls, one dull blue for the burner and the steam — which keeps the print [inside the short palette that actually survives fabric printing](/stories/limited-palette-prints-better) rather than trying to render the scene in full colour. Enamel white, bone or a pale grey ground all let the two inks sit forward without a third colour competing for attention. ## How do I get one made? Describe the meal at [JustOG](/) — what's in the pot, how the portions divide, how many bowls. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). The pot's still the same size it started as. The last bowl in the row is smaller than a proper share.