Design for commodity

Reading an article about soy-sauce dispenser some months ago, I was so shocked, because such commodities should be same, I assumed. Of course it comes from my unfamiliarity with general design context, but I didn't know the world of industrial design very much. Here's  a quotation from the site of NYTimes:

“Faced with that nothingness, I felt a great nostalgia for human culture,” he recalled from the offices of G. K. Design, the firm he co-founded in Tokyo in 1952. “I needed something to touch, to look at,” he added. “Right then I decided to be a maker of things.”

When I introduced this article to my friends in Facebook page, some of them advised me that it is very famous people in industrial design, and also they said he was so famous there. According to the G.K. Design web-page, there is an office in Mejiro, which is near my university. (Unfortunately, I've never been there...)

Also, the designer answered to the interviewer like...

Why soy sauce? I was studying oil painting, but my interests changed. Because oil paintings European in origin, and sumi painting is from China. Then I went to Paris for a month, and I was very sick, but when I ate soy sauce, my condition improved.

As my major was mathematics in college/graduate school, I knew some people who were interested in both pure mathematics and applied. But, I'm too unfamiliar in design/art context to imagine how such people are interested in. At least, almost painters seemed to me that they were not concerned about actual industry... As we can see the web-site of G.K. Design as above, I'd like to go there if possible.