Rishtan

Rishtan makes the blue-green pottery that turns up on every table in Uzbekistan, and it makes it from clay that lies a metre under the whole town and can be thrown without being washed or blended. The colour comes from a glaze called ishkor, mixed from mineral pigment and the ash of a mountain plant, which no other centre in the country still uses at this scale. Several hundred workshops operate, and the ones with museums attached will take a visitor through shaping, painting and firing in an afternoon. The finished plates are stacked by the road out of town for anyone driving past.