From the beginning, people used pottery as a way of constructing their social identity, or showing who they were and how they were different from other people. Many of the designs used on pottery were borrowed from cloth, which was also used to identify people of one group or another. little later on, European and Chinese potters began using lead glazes too. About 1200 AD, potters of the Yuan dynasty in China began to use different color glazes to create designs on their pots. Chinese pottery was still the best and the most expensive.