How it all began

Emma Bridgewater, ceramics designer and manufacturer

I definitely didn’t plan a life in the Potteries. I wanted to write and I imagined I’d work for a publisher or literary agent. But I think a seductive idea of the importance, and also the loveliness, of household china flowered in my mind early on and made me susceptible to a career in the industry—and for this I blame Beatrix Potter.

The Tailor of Gloucester was an especial favourite of Mum’s and she read it quite frequently—together with The Tale of Mr Tod (which also features kitchen crockery: meat plates are smashed in the great fight between Mr Tod and Tommy Brock). When the Tailor of Gloucester is ill in bed, his cat Simpkin imprisons all the kind and clever mice under the china cups on the kitchen dresser. I loved that dresser and pored over each cup and saucer. They were the same as some on our kitchen dresser, but with dancing mice in dear little outfits among them. Emma Bridgewater is president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and a patron of the Heritage Crafts Association. She founded her eponymous company, best known for its earthenware pottery designs, such as Polka Dot, in 1985. Operating from a factory in Stoke-on-Trent, it is one of the largest pottery manufacturers