Almost everywhere in the world there is a very long ceramic tradition. The techniques have been discovered independently in many places in the world. Historians nowadays assume that people used clay some 20,000 years ago to make pots that were fired into ceramics (10,000 years before the discovery of agriculture).
The first ceramic objects were probably fired by chance in open wood fires. Nowadays ceramics are fired in very many ways, gas, oil, coal, electricity and still with wood, such as in La Borne (France). And you guessed it: I experienced the local ceramics traditions up close this summer …