The pottery workshops along the main street and in the lanes behind it are the reason Avanos exists as a tourist destination. The clay is distinctive — heavy, dark red from the iron oxide that colours the Kizilirmak River — and the Chez Galip workshop, one of the oldest and best-known, has a display cave lined with tens of thousands of locks of women's hair, each tagged with an address card, collected by the owner over decades. It is a strange and memorable thing to see.
Most workshops welcome visitors to watch the potters work the kick wheel and will set you up to try it yourself for a small fee or the understanding that you will look at their wares afterward. The larger places have showrooms where the quality ranges from tourist-grade to genuinely beautiful pieces. If you are buying, compare prices — the same basic bowl can cost three times more in a prominent street-front shop than in a quieter lane twenty metres away.