Pottery is any kind of dish, pot, vase, or other object that is formed of clay and baked until it is hard. The finest chinaware and the roughest clay pots are both forms of pottery. The science of making pottery is called ceramics. Pottery has been called the oldest of all the art forms. Men were making pottery for thousands of years before the introduction of metal. Man learned and developed hundreds of different ways of making pottery and decorating it so that it could be beautiful as well as practical.