From this site one can start to investigate the history of ceramics covering a range of forms, from purely functional to profound.
Ceramic forms have been both created exclusively for food, whether to eat, cook or store it. These forms are as simple as taking the crudest base clay and making a simple utilitarian object without much embellishment, just direct functionality.
Other pieces were made to impress, awe, and celebrate the technical as well as symbolic meanings in culture. These vessels often go to unimagined technical levels, impressing even the most jaded viewer.
Large and small in scale, all these ceramic objects have been made for millennia to be used in tombs, palaces, industrial expositions, and in other cases, for the intimate and private conditions of sustaining life in the privacy of home.