Sitting around the fire, the earliest potter would have mostly pinched clay he found by a river bed. He would have squashed the raw clay into a shape of what we know today as a Japanese tea cup; a similar shape as if we cupped water with our hands and drank from that same river. The potter would have laid the cup in the fire to hard the new drinking vessel. He might have bartered berries, animals skins or other items for his drinking forms; or he might have been mugged in the middle of the night while trying to stay warm by that fire, only to start his creative process over the next day.
Extrudergirl 