The discovery that clay taken from the fertile earth could be used to create vessels for storage was one of the most important steps forward in human civilisation. Using pottery jars for storing and carrying water, one of the most essential needs, transformed domestic life.
For archaeologists and historians pottery is among the most important sources of information about past cultures. The first pottery was made 35,000 years ago, when clay was shaped into figurines or small relief motifs. At first pottery was dried in the sun, until the discovery that heating by fire rendered the clay stronger and less porous, which meant that vessels could be used to hold liquids as well as dry substances. Eventually glazes made of melted sand were developed that gave pottery an attractive waterproof coating.

The Turkic peoples had made pottery in Central Asia, and this art developed still further after the Seljuk Turks arrived in Anatolia, a land which had been an important centre of pottery production from very early times. Both Seljuks and Ottomans adopted Anatolian materials and techniques for their ceramics. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Konya was the centre of Seljuk ceramic manufacture, but it was during the Ottoman period that the Turkish art of ceramic making reached its peak with the Iznik tiles and vessels produced between the 14th and 17th centuries. And with the decline in the Iznik potteries, Kütahya became the new centre of pottery and tile manufacture.

The repertoire of motifs is diverse, including human and animal figures, masks, rosettes and undulating branches. Archaeological excavations in Central Anatolia have revealed jars of this type with close affinities to Syrian ceramics and thought to have been made in southeast Anatolia.
As well as pottery plates, bowls, jars and other vessels, glazed tiles were widely produced by the Seljuks as architectural decoration for both secular and sacral buildings. These tiles were known as kâsi, after the Persian city of Kashan, a famous centre of painted and glazed tile manufacture.