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Shave Lather Bowl, Best Dimensions?

Currently, I have a Robert Becker scuttle the lathering area is 2" deep by 4 1/2" wide. It just doesn't seem deep enough, as the lather starts to come over the edges when creating the lather. Therefore, I'm now searching for a new lather bowl to use when I don't want to use the scuttle. By all your past experiences, what do you think the best measurements are for a shave lather bowl? Depth and width? Thanks in advance.
 
I went to a thrift store, actually several, and bought bowls and containers that I thought would make good lathering bowls. It's easy to find beautiful and well made ones, but I bought them just to try out different sizes to get the correct depth and width. At $.50 to $1 each, it's cheap but much cheaper than buying shaving bowls that are purpose made.
Some of them I still use. I found two hotel dinnerware pieces one a coffee mug and the other a sugar bowl either from the thirties or of thirties design. Little works of functional art.
 
For me its a fairly wide bowl with straightish sides (or even slightly closing in at the top) . Flared sides means the lather slops out. I also look for fairly heavy ceramics to better retain heat for a warm lather. Other than that I have a few different sized brushes and so some bowls work better than others. Nothing wrong with having a small collection of bowls along with the rest of your stash.
 
I'd say something about 5" wide and about 4" deep I'd say would work well with most of my brushes personally. Even when I'm using a smaller boar I just tilt the cup about 30-40 degrees and just whip up my lather that way. I like the bottom flat with a short curve up to straight walls. I find that lather spilling out isn't too much of a problem, just flip it back in with the brush. I lucked out and found some big mugs in a back room at work that are only a little smaller and I wish they were just a touch larger, but they work very well for me. They have some heft to them as well which means they hold heat so that the lather stays warm like BubbleBoy mentioned.
 
Got a $1.60 double-walled plastic salsa bowl from Wal-mart. Hit it with some 100 grit sandpaper and carved some crosshatch lines into it.
Cheap, damn near unbreakable..and it works.
 
I use two old stainless steel Danish gravy servers that came out of the back of my kitchen cabinet to make lather in. After trying lots of other bowls/mugs these seem to be the best that I have found. They are both marked Leonard Denmark 18/8 (stainless)

The large one is 5 3/4" across by 2 3/4" deep and perfect for my larger brushes like the Polo 12 and Rooney 3xl

The smaller one is 5 1/4" across by 2 1/2" deep and perfect for my smaller brushes like the Kent BK8

I've had these two bowls for 20 years or so. Never realized how useful they were until I joined B&B and started looking for more things to make lather in Before joining B&B I had always face lathered (always as in for the past 45 years)

If these look interesting you can go to the gravy boat section of eBay and type in either Denmark or Danish (or stainless if you want to wade through a whole pile of them) you will come up with a lot of them. The rim on the bottom makes it easy to hold and it catches any lather that over flows the bowl which helps keep things a little less messy in the shave den.

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Currently, I have a Robert Becker scuttle the lathering area is 2" deep by 4 1/2" wide. It just doesn't seem deep enough, as the lather starts to come over the edges when creating the lather. Therefore, I'm now searching for a new lather bowl to use when I don't want to use the scuttle. By all your past experiences, what do you think the best measurements are for a shave lather bowl? Depth and width? Thanks in advance.
I don't bowl lather these days but 2" deep was plenty for me. Another YMMV matter. Use what works for you. Few things around here are universally ideal.
 
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