Is the algorithm different from a simple sorted order in this case? The difficulty with TSP is that you have to return to the start, which wouldn't seek to be the case with stacled bowls, unless you're stacking them in a ring somehow.
That is not the difficulty with TSP. The problem doesn't get any easier if you can end wherever you please.
It still seems to me that bowl-stacking is solved by sorting alone, though, which is of course much simpler.