Unsung kitchen heroes: small ceramic prep bowls

I love all prep bowls and find them endlessly useful. I have a set of 6 stainless steel ones that hold about a cup each and have nifty little lids that you can pop on if you need to store something. Those are great and I use them beyond their intent as mere prep bowls to do everything from separating eggs to reserving bacon fat. But my real love is reserved for two tiny bowls that sit between my stove and sink, nested into each other. They are delicate little pieces of pottery that I inherited from Melanie one day when she brought them upstairs, declaring that she was going to reduce the amount of dusting she had to do. She likes pottery of all kinds and it was easy to see why she picked these out--they are very elegant, blue-glazed little pots that look too pretty to be as useful as they are. They seem deeper than they are because of the lustrous dark blue in their centers, but really one holds about 1/2 cup, the other probably less than 1/4. They get used almost everyday; one will get filled with parsley, the other with garlic, or maybe one with lemon juice and one with dill. Sometimes the garlic gets sliced then fried and sits in the bigger one where it crisps up into a topping for stir fry. They are only ever an arms length away from cutting board or stovetop activities and probably a reason I use them so much more often than the stainless steel set is because they are much prettier to look at. So, of course I leave them out on the counter; so, of course they are always used. Function follows form, which can be disastrous but in this case works out well.