Samian ware was a type of highly-regarded pottery made in Gaul. The pots were vivid red and featured extraordinarily intricate designs. Samian ware was produced in vast numbers. One record states that 34 potters working on Samian ware produced more than 400,000 pots in only a few months. A good deal of this would then have been exported to Britain. Production of Samian ware dropped significantly in the second century (it is not known why), so Britons began producing copies. They were not as high quality as proper Samian ware but were generally accepted as substitutes.
In the second and third centuries, Germanic pottery began to be imported into Britain. It was of lower quality than the exquisite Samian ware and looked rather more like metal than clay. These coarser German pots sometimes had inscriptions, such as Bibe – Latin for drink. Different types of pottery were imported from different places. Flagons were imported from modern-day Belgium and Germany, amphorae were from southern Gaul and mortaria were from North East Gaul and Belgium.