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Emily Myers - Potter Background Information
A short history of pottery Pottery is the process of making things from clay and then permanently hardening them by firing them in a kiln. It is one of the oldest crafts known to man. The earliest known pottery comes from Japan and was made in 10500 BC. The Chinese started making pots soon after this. Clay pots are heavy and easily broken so it was only as people moved from hunting and gathering their food to more settled farming that pottery became widespread. The first pots were made using thumbs and fingers to shape the clay. Later larger pots were made using clay coils to build up the walls before smoothing them down. The first potters experimented with firing their pots by putting them briefly in cooking ovens and bonfires. The first pottery kilns appeared before 6000 BC in Iran. The potter’s wheel was first invented around 3000 BC in North East China. It needed someone else to turn the wheel but left both hands free to shape the pot. In most parts of the world, clay has been readily available, so pottery has been made for thousands of years all over the world. Different cultures have produced distinctive pottery by using different methods and decorations. Many Neolithic potters (early farming communities 10,000 — 5,000 years ago in most parts of the world) painted their pots in red and black with all sorts of patterns and pictures. The Badarian people of the Nile Valley (c.5000 — 4500 BC) decorated their bowls with ripples produced by dragging a comb over the soft clay. Unglazed pottery is porous. The first glazed pottery was produced about 1500 BC in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) although it was more commonly used on buildings rather than pots. Glaze is a form of glass, which makes the clay shiny and waterproof. Today a lot of pottery for everyday use, such as plates, mugs and flowerpots, is mass produced in factories. However, throughout history there have been many famous potters and there are many potters today producing their own distinctive, handmade pottery.
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