KIYO
It's a cutlery series to savor the real taste of food.
KIYO is a Japanese style model made entirely of zirconia.
The most of metals has a catalytic phenomenon on lipids and decomposes them into gas which has metallic odor.
Since the cell membrane is made of lipids, animal cells that don't have the cell wall, such as meat, fish, and the human mouth, easily generate a metallic odor. As a result, when you put a metal cutlery in your mouth, the metallic odor generated goes through your mouth to your nose and disturb the flavor of the dish.
Zirconia is a ceramic used for medical implants. It doesn't cause any chemical reaction. So, you can savor the real teste of food by using zirconia cutleries.
KIYO is named after "purity". It's entirly made of zirconia, which is hard like gemstones, supple like metal, and free from metal allergies like ceramics.
Since this model is made entirly one material, it has got a integrity on design.
The zirconia processing consists of forming and sintering, similar to traditional pottery. However, the dimensional change in sintering for traditional ceramics is about 5% to 15%, while in zirconia it is as much as 30%. Therefore, it's difficult to make a large product due to many deformations and cracks. To solve this problem, the SUMU series announced in 2019 used zirconia only at the tip and the stem was of a special highly durable resin which can be made only as black to satisfy the ideal properties.
It's hard to find any practical white cutlery except our products, and there was a demand for a completely white cutlery Therefore, we further developed the technology, announced the smaller KIYO dessert series at the end of 2020 and gained experience, then challenged the dinner series in 2021.
KIYO Dinner Spoon
Size：188 mm x 37 mm x 27 mm
Weight：25.5 g
KIYO Dinner Fork
Size：188 mm x 24 mm x 33 mm
Weight：20.6 g
KIYO Dinner Knife
Size：197 mm x 8 mm x 8 mm
Weight：23.6 g
Company Story
I noticed that soup was more flavorful consumed directly from the bowl than with a
spoon. It was the metallic odor from the spoon caused by an oxidized reaction of metal that hid the true taste. Inert materials reveal true flavors however, common alternatives such as pearl oyster shells or ceramic, are not practical nor durable. I was determined to find a solution with zirconia ceramic, which is the most durable, even more so than metals.
Our zirconia processing technology is an innovative combination of fabrication methods from the ceramic arts industry and from the mass production of plastics. The major issue was that by solely using plastics technology, the surfaces of the cutlery developed irregular creases. Therefore, we solved this issue by treating the collection as an industrial art. We took only one part from one mold, instead of taking multiple parts and we invested more time for each process to control the material flow in the mold. The ejection of the part was done by hand, one by one, to eliminate creases. After trial and error, we also developed special setters for the sintering process to emphasize uniformity instead of traditional ceramic arts that have visible irregularities.
Our ambition is for people to savor the real taste of food by using zirconia cutlery.