The ceramics industry in Thailand began early in the Sukhotai period (around 1350) when potters migrated south to escape the Mongol invasion of Sung Dynasty China. They congregated near Sawankalok. The Sawankalok pots were early examples of mass production. The items to be fired were stacked in kilns with metal plates separating the various layers. These left gouges in the upper surface of each item. Five of these marks can be clearly seen on most Sawankalok pots.

The most numerous of these pieces are buff coloured with symbolic wheel designs ("chakras") or single or paired fish. Many plates were produced in this style, as well as celadon and other wares, but the most attractive pieces are small buff jars with whimsical designs. Today, the Thai ceramics industry produces items which are more similar to the Chinese export ware of the past 100 years.

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Korea has the second longest tradition of porcelain production in the world (after China). Korean potters first produced porcelain in 918, during the Koryo Dynasty. Although contemporary with the Chinese Sung Dynasty, the Koryo potters took their inspiration from the earlier Tang Dynasty Yue wares. These were grey-green vessels (called "celadon" in the West or "Ch’ongja" in Korean) with incised patterns under the glaze. Their ideal was to reproduce the colour of jade. The most common decoration of Korean pottery is the crane which is a symbol of long life.

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Pottery has been made in Japan since Neolithic times (from before 4,500 B.C.). Early wares employed techniques and styles imported from China, Korea an even as far away as Vietnam. A favoured technique was to cord or woven material onto pots while still soft, giving a ribbed effect. Japanese Jomon period cord pattern wares were among the most accomplished ceramics being made anywhere in the world at the time. During the Yayoi period, from the third century BC to the third century AD, Japanese potters were using the potter’s wheel to produce a range of objects, including vases and bottles. Many of these objects display horizontal zoning or geometric patters but they were not yet glazed.

During the Tumulus period (from the 5th to the 7th centuries A.D.) potters from Korea introduced grey stoneware with a celadon glaze, known as Sue ware.  During the Chinese Tang dynasty (from 618 to 906 AD), Japan maintained friendly relations with China whose achievements Japan much admired. As a result, Japan attempted to emulate China in many ways. One of these was the adoption of Buddhism; another was the creation of a national capital at Nara modelled on the Chinese capital of Xian; and another was importation and copying of Chinese artefacts.

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Early America colonial ceramics were simple, functional redwares (earthenwares with a rich brown-red colour from the iron oxide in the clay). Initially they were decorated with slip glazed blotches of colour or simple words or names. From about 1760, sgrafitto decoration (scratching a design through a coloured glaze) was used in Pennsylvania.

From early in the 18th century, stoneware was produced - most of it thick, utilitarian pieces with simple decoration in cobalt blue or brown. Stoneware, rather than redware production was boosted late in the 18th century by a scare about lead poisoning from the glaze used on redware.

In 1738, Andre Duche discovered a thick vein of kaolin clay, needed to produce porcelain, running from Virginia through Georgia. Despite several earlier attempts, it was not until 1800 that sustained porcelain production commenced at the Philadelphia works owned by William Ellis Tucker. Its most famous products were fine, white pitchers with floral decoration.

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There was once a Mandarin who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-se. He employed a secretary, Chang who, while he was attending to his master’s accounts, fell in love with Koong-se, much to the anger of the Mandarin, who regarded the secretary as unworthy of his daughter. The secretary was banished and a fence constructed around the gardens of the Mandarin’s estate so that Chang could not see his daughter and Koong-se could only walk in the gardens and to the water’s edge.

One day a shell fitted with sails containing a poem, and a bead which Koong-se had given to Chang, floated to the water’s edge. Koong-se knew that her lover was not far away.

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In 1745, the French had established a factory at Vincennes with a 20-year monopoly on the production of porcelain in the style of Meissen. In 1748, the technique for gilding porcelain was discovered and, from 1749, gilding. In 1752, an underglaze blue, called "bleu lapis", was introduced. From that time, the use of dark blue ground and gilding became characteristic of the more expensive wares produced by the factory. (In 1763 bleu lapis was replaced by and overglaze "bleu nouveau" which is less cloudy.)

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 Ceramics are made by baking various types of clay in a kiln. The type of pottery produced depends on the clay and the temperature of firing in the kiln.

There are three basic types of pottery: earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. (Pottery is any ceramic shaped as a vessel, such as a pot or vase.)

Earthenware is fired at the lowest temperature - between 700 and 1200 degrees C. At this temperature, the particles of clay do not fuse together completely. As a result earthenware is porous and can be scratched with a knife. Terracotta is a common type of earthenware.

To make earthenware hold water, it must be glazed. A glaze is simply a coating of glass. The most common glazes, called "lead glazes" are essentially the same glass as is used in lead-light windows. The glaze is applied to the pot either as a powder or as a suspension in water. This can be done either before the pot is fired or after an initial "biscuit" firing. The pot is then fired to melt the glaze onto its surface.

A less common method of glazing is to throw common salt over the pots in the kiln when it is at its highest temperature. The salt reacts chemically with the silicates in the surface clay and produces a very thin layer of glaze.

Stoneware is fired between 1200 and 1350 degrees C. This fuses the clay particles together so the stoneware only needs to be glazed for aesthetic reasons.

Porcelain is made from china clay (called "kaolin" in China) and china stone (felspar) fired at between 1250 and 1400 degrees C. The result is extremely hard, white and translucent. Porcelain made in this way is called "hard- paste" porcelain.

For centuries, potters tried to imitate porcelain using other clays. These products are called "soft-paste" porcelain.

One development from porcelain is bone china, which has up to 50% powdered bone added to the china clay and china stone.

 After the basic pot has been shaped by moulding or throwing on a potter’s wheel, it can be decorated by cutting or by pressing patterns into its surface. This is usually done at the "leather-hard" stage, when the clay has dried but not been fired.

Alternatively, decoration may be added to the surface of the pot. Most often the decoration is moulded from clay and stuck on with "slip", a mixture of clay and water before the pot is fired.

Painting pottery presents a difficulty because paint applied after glazing easily comes off, whereas colours added before glazing, or coloured glazes, have to withstand the high temperature of the kiln. Pigments are usually metal compounds. In most kilns, the metals in the pigments, and in any impurities in the clay or glaze, are converted to the metal oxide - which is likely to be an entirely different colour. It is also possible to design kilns which have the opposite effect, reducing any metal oxides to the base metal. Sometimes pots are fired in both oxidising and reducing kilns to produce particular decorative effects, such as the metallic sheen of lustre ware.

Because of its low firing temperature, it is relatively easy to produce brightly coloured earthenware. But finding the pigments and processes necessary to decorate stoneware and porcelain is much more difficult.

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In the seventh century, Arab armies created an empire in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. Artisans were able to move easily between the various states of this empire sharing ideas and techniques. One result was that for almost a thousand years, the Islamic countries produced some of the world’s finest ceramics.

The earliest Islamic pottery was decorated with incised patterns or patterns of applied clay but the Islamic potters greatly admired Chinese Tang Dynasty wares which reached the Arab countries by the "Silk Road of the Sea" across the Indian Ocean. At first, the whiteness of the Tang porcelain was imitated by covering earthenware with a mixture of tin oxide and a clear lead glaze - a technique used centuries earlier by the Egyptians. Using blue and green glazes, the Islamic potters produced wares closely resembling the Tang. However, the glazing techniques of the Arabs advanced rapidly and soon surpassed the Chinese.

The most important technique was the use of lustre. The technique of painting in lustre was developed by Syrian and Egyptian glassmakers who began applying it to pottery at the end of the ninth century. The technique was taken up by Mesopotamian potters who applied it particularly to relief moulded wares to imitate bronze, brass or gold. Samara and Baghdad became important pottery centres producing these lustre wares. In the twelfth century, in an attempt to imitate Sung Dynasty porcelain, a way of producing a stronger, harder and whiter body than earthenware was developed. This material lent itself admirably to finely carved and pierced decoration and to painted designs with great linear control and tonal variety.

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Chinese Bronze Age pottery was mainly grey but small quantities of white pottery were produced. This "proto-porcelain" seems to have been produced almost by chance. Kaolin (the main constituent of porcelain) was relatively common and the temperature required to smelt bronze (1100 degrees C) happens to be close to the firing temperature for porcelain (1250 degrees C). Very few of these white pottery items have been found and most of these were in the tombs of kings.

Types of pottery were produced during the Warring States Period included grey, red brown and black. The brown pottery was painted with coloured patterns. The black pottery was produced by smoking the pot when it was partly dry so that particles of charcoal adhered to the paste. After firing these pots were polished to a high lustre.

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