Iconic Ceramicist and Entrepreneur Emma Bridgewater on Making Things That Matter🔥❤️‍🔥__

Speaker: today we are interviewing Emma Bridgewater bastion of impacting communities.

Speaker 2: Bastion. I like that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord. All things creative. Setting up Emma Bridgewater in 19 84,

Speaker 2: 84 was my first trip to Stoke. We got going in early 85.

Speaker: Now we're just gonna run through some facts just to

Speaker 2: Yeah.

'

Speaker 2: Cause who knows who I am.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. You founded , Emma Bridgewater, and each year sell 1.9 million pieces approximately,

Speaker 2: whatever that means. We've traded profitably almost our whole history and grown in fits and starts.

During COVID we tipped sort of something like 35 million turnover. The number of pieces, if you think that's right, that means someone's put it on the internet.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Hopefully for my organization. And it's correct. I lost count,

Speaker: easy to lose count. Another interesting fact, 72,000 personalized items sold in 2003 alone, which, when one thinks of your products, gi giftings a part, big part of [00:01:00] that. And an interesting, you say

Speaker 2: gifting. I say giving presents.

Arthur: Giving presents present,

Speaker 2: Giving

Speaker: present

Speaker 2: giving is huge and sweet.

And that is really at the heart of the business is it's where I started. I wanted to find something for my mom that said how much I missed her and how much I'd like to be sitting just like this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea or a cup of coffee gossiping away. But I was in my early twenties, I was running around in London and I went to look in a China shop and they didn't have anything that in any way felt like her kitchen.

And that was the hooray moment when I thought, I'm going me, I'm going to make that pottery

Speaker: to make that kind of expression. You were like, no, this is gonna happen.

Speaker 2: I think we need this. And I think if I made it, people. Would buy it. And it is crazy. And then when I went to Stoke probably about three or four weeks later, I was completely hooked.

There was so much I didn't know. But what I could see was that this had been , an incredible heavy industrial city [00:02:00] coal mines and foundries and all these famous potteries, sped and Copeland and Minton and Wedgewood and I, it was also obvious that things weren't going well. And I felt a very clear and distinct sense that I was going to make one of those pries, one of the big, at the time, many derelict Victorian factories.

I was gonna bring one of them back to life. It was as simple as that.

Speaker: And that's what, and that's what we've done. Over 300 people are, employed. We

Speaker 2: about 360 I think at the moment.

Speaker: Two things that I wanna touch on here , that really are quite striking. One is, and you talked about this, but when you had this gut feel that this had worked and then you had some samples made you would effectively sell them in trade fairs.

And you talk of this just having this sense that it will work. Where do you think that comes from? How do you tap into that?

Speaker 2: I went through a period of kind of very consciously seeking for inspiration. I'd worked for my dad, he was an entrepreneur. I'd done porridge as an overdrawn student in his [00:03:00] company, which was admirably, organized.

And then I had this wonderful contrast experience immediately after university, I started working for some girls who designed knitwear in a very, marvelously, gloriously eccentric and effective way. And I learnt that my year with them, an enormous amount and in my simple mind, and it is brilliant.

The bliss of ignorance is very helpful. I was in my early twenties and I knew nothing really, but I could see that his booted and suited kind of outlook and there. We're doing this for the joy of it. We love what we make, but we, nobody's gonna break their backs. Getting too overexcited about growing the business enormously the both sort of had a lot to recommend them and I thought, I can, I think the things I understand about both these businesses, I can blend to my advantage.

And so I then went on a kind of conscious hunt for an idea and the best, there's [00:04:00] a, and then the moment came really first in that China shop thinking they're not making, the factories aren't making what I want to buy to give my mom. So there's, there is significantly, there's a gap in the market and there could be a dresser at the end of the shop there with brightly colored, hand decorated, mismatched kind of pottery, the kind of thing she likes.

And I could see it in my mind's eye in a very sort of vague way. But when I went to Stoke. Lots and lots of things happened, but the main thing was my idea gelled and it had a reality. And that one of the derelict Victorian factories I drove past in that first ta on that first taxi ride was this incredibly clear emblem for me of what I was gonna do.

And I think that's really lucky. I think once you can envisage what you're trying to do, then doing it is inevitable. And I think quite often it's vague. You are longing for something, but you don't quite know what once if you are lucky enough or when you perhaps have to put, [00:05:00] try and put yourself through the process of finding the thing that you are gonna want to get out, leap outta bed every morning to do.

And I definitely found it there. And then, and the more I learned about Stoke, the more kind of completely obsessed I became. I am. Boring on the subject. I know the ancient mariner of the pottery is tested to chant on about the place, but it still blows me away the the traditions and the skills inherent in the city.

And I genuinely I often at night wake up and think someone's dying tonight and taking a painting skill that I have failed or, making skill or gilding that I haven't found out about. And I can't bear it. I feel that something is slipping away. I'm very it because I work in Stoke, because I love the city.

There's nowhere cheerier friendlier or funnier. I know what an incredible loss that is. And it seems baffling to me [00:06:00] that we don't value that. And that it seemed like a reasonable proposition to dump that workforce and go and find cheap manufacturing and trash some. Country that might not have wanted it at all.

Really. It just makes me sad.

Speaker: You made a dame this year, was it this

Speaker 2: year? Yes.

I think it was, it came out last year, but I've just been to winter,

Week before

Speaker: which touches on, , services of the economy.

Speaker 2: Yes. I immediately go into imposter syndrome and I think I haven't done nearly enough to deserve it.

I wish that the business was much bigger. I wish that I could say that what I've done has drawn lots of other people to stoke, I think, that are interesting green shoots there, there are some small businesses that have got interesting things going on, and there are two or three big businesses.

Thank God that still mean. There is a real industry there, but it's fragile. And you and I have been talking about shopping and being conscious of the food we buy. Shopping is the most political thing we do, and. Taking the trouble to find [00:07:00] out where the sofa or the where the sick were grown, where the sofa was made, where the China's made it is worth it.

Because your decision makes a big difference to the world. And I wish, as I say, I wish I'd had more of an effect in Stoke, but we do put something like this year be about 14 million into the local economy and salaries. And there's also, that's the direct effect. But then there's a whole, the sort of around that the supply chain and the families of all the people that we work with, that's, it's still only a drop in the ocean, but it's significantly,

Speaker: It can't be taken for granted, you live with what you do and your passions, your energy every day.

But that's an extraordinary accomplishment, what you do but what's very striking is just how connected you feel to contributing and how much pleasure that gives you and how part of the system you feel. And sometimes , that does seem people for so many different reasons, can feel on their own or disconnected to wanting to [00:08:00] contribute.

Tax is such a big issue, for example. How do you think we can wire and encourage people to want to contribute more? And contribution comes in so many ways, right? Some people can contribute to helping support family in a really big way. Other people work on policy, various things, but just pushing us to a society where we are wanting to contribute more.

How do you see that gap being bridged?

Speaker 2: It's a really interesting question. I worry that what's happening at the moment. Is the more time we spend on our phones and particularly engaged in social media the more we drive ourselves apart from each other, and I do feel strongly there's a very simple truth, which is spend less time on your phone.

Don't expect that's where you're going to find your true love. Just where you're going to find disappointment and frustration and that sort of anxious feeling that the algorithms stir up in you. Put it down, walk away. [00:09:00] You've met Guy Hayward from the British Pilgrimage Trust. He taught me and reminded me what mom had taught all of us when we were little.

You need to get outside. You need to walk, you need to open your eyes and broaden your horizons and you need to be out amongst people. I think what we need is community. There are lots of significant things that we're, we are flinging away at the moment. One of them is community.

Actual knowing your neighbor's names and and being involved in helping each other. Like when I, I locked myself out the other day and there was a hilarious thing of getting permission from these neighbors to use the key to that neighbor's front door so that I could climb in over the wall because I had left the kitchen door open.

Luckily, and the joy of that, that they all know each other and that I've arrived in a community that has got a very strong, it's a, it remembers being a closely knit community. We need that community and we need some kind of a spiritual [00:10:00] life. For lots of good reasons people have turned away from organized and traditional religion, but both those things are profoundly important, profoundly lovely.

They're things that enrich your and deepen your life and make, I think, make it much more obvious how. How crucial it's that you can make a contribution, not just snatch what you can for yourself. And we always, we have a tendency to say, it's all got to happen at school. We, whether it's teaching children to sit at the table or to brush their teeth, we always say it's got to happen in school.

I think the schools do a lot about it. I think it's a family issue. My mother's family do come from a very, it's a very strong tradition of service. And so I think I remember, I think probably my great-grandmother was even laying that trip on me when I was a little girl. I remember spending quite a bit of time with her.

Somehow I knew that life was a serious business. And [00:11:00] certainly, the kind of granny conversations I had as a little girl were about making the, you are very lucky and you've you need to pay that back down the line. And I don't think that's very fashionable. I don't think you do hear that much.

 But I do think it's what people essentially innately want to do. But think we're being enslaved

 to a kind of, to a machine that isn't, doesn't please us. Capitalism is basically pretty horrid. I know. It's the sort of system that has perhaps best, it served us fairly well, but I think we should all be questioning fundamentally whether what we want is actually more money. It isn't

Speaker: but it, but social media almost feels like a kind of it, it encourages like a very individualistic world.

World where it's oh, about individual is about me. Yes me. Look at me. Do you have a belief on how that could be changed in small ways?

Speaker 2: I think it only changes in each individual, and it is about putting your phone down and committing yourself [00:12:00] to being more creative, being, make a cake rather than buy it sometimes ask your friends friend to, we, we know the kind of things we should be doing, and yet it's very easy to be doom scrolling for hours on end.

I don't think there's a sort of mass movement, but I do think that there's a great under toe now that says, this isn't enough. This isn't working. This isn't making us happy. But it's only we each need to tackle that ourselves, I think. And I know that when I feel anxious doing something creative, whether it's making bread or I've recently relearnt the crocheting that one of my grannies taught me when I was little.

And I make big. Patchwork quilts made. They take about two years each, and I've made, I think I count when I count, delivered the last one recently to one of my nieces. I think I've made 13 or 14. So I have to have something that allays the kind of sense of [00:13:00] what am I doing? It doesn't end anxiety.

If you do something creative, you can't feel anxious. There's a brilliant bit of

Speaker: absolute, you're not, you don't, you just don't really see creativity or people doing creative things necessarily on social media. It's, it's generally people meeting up socially, yes. In a bar or whatever.

They're

Speaker 2: trying to make you feel that they're at a party that you haven't been asked to, is the sort of broad sense of it.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

There's so much evidence that people have so much to learn from you, based on how you contribute to people and all the creations that you've created.

Talk to us about your simple joy and where that comes from.

Speaker 2: Simple joy is, family and friends. It's sharing meals together. It's, I'm lucky me. Mom was a very good cook. My stepmother was a very good cook.

My children all are my ex is a very good cook. That business of making, knocking out in quite a sort of, rough and ready way, delicious food and sharing it with people, I do think that either grounding things such [00:14:00] as be aware of going outside every day and not just scuttling from one shop to the next and necking a lot of coffee on the run.

But go for a walk and notice at the moment the storm of the black thorn, the slows. What will be slow is that's the white blossom everywhere, not the big fat. There's lots of prunus that flowers early, there, which are they're tame trees, but the wild black t thorn everywhere is so fantastically beautiful at the moment.

Those are the things that noticing that. And I do, I really love having a creative making project on the go so that I look forward very much to evenings at home where I light the fire. For me, lighting a fire is a really, that I love that ritual. I love candlelight. Obviously I don't do my crochet or my sewing by candlelight.

That would be daft and I would be squinting away and it would be very messy. Sim it's quite simple [00:15:00] things. There's some routines that ground you.

Family, being a granny.

Absolutely marvelous.

So exciting. Taking him to the v and a for children down the road from here and seeing his utter delight at all the other children playing, but also the DOLs houses completely fascinated him. And we went to the Mond exhibit about, water and grommet and animation, which he's too small to understand, but when he saw that the motorbike, he was very excited.

We said it's not three yet, but he loved it. We sat on the floor and watched clips of films. There couldn't be anything more joyful than that.

Speaker: Yeah. And work, forgetting the scale of things. Where are the simple pleasures from?

Speaker 2: Oh, the creative time from the business in, there's a wonderful studio set up in Stoke and and some of the design team are in London because we've always had a customer facing London office.

But when everyone's in, when the creative team are all in [00:16:00] Stoke and we are very keen on getting our paper and mixing up gu to match some of the pottery colors and doing a lot of playing with pattern in a very, messy

Speedy way and getting everyone and get people who don't normally 'cause working on Max is awful.

That's a real joy stealer. But there's the body of the volume of work means an awful lot of it is done on computers. But I'm always very keen that we, the first principles are in everyone's heads that you should make wet artwork and understand the spontaneity of that. And we try and keep that character don't 'cause, 'cause the awful thing about Max is the neatening.

And once you start meeting, you dunno when to stop. And before you know it, you've neatened the life out of it. So trying to keep it quite splashy and get people who don't normally ever get busy, with a pencil and paper working creatively that's really joyful. And the factory itself, I always love being in the factory, but watching the extraordinary pleasure, it tends to give almost everyone who goes [00:17:00]on the factory tour, which is an enormous number of people now that they're fully booked all the time, the tours and.

That interaction, the fun of watching the teams making diligently and skillfully and the chatty ones are on the ends of the rows. And there'll be a guide who might easily have worked in a factory or, they know the industry very well. They'll be telling very good stories, and sometimes the potters will join in.

But the fun for me is seeing that the customers meeting the makers and the makers know really fully understanding how much the customer loves what they do. So that kind of incredible feedback, Luke, which doesn't happen very often, I don't think. There's so much pride and happiness in that.

Lots and lots. Obviously there are also annoying rous and things going wrong and what have you, but there's a lot of positive reaffirmation going on, all the time in that. And it also, you can see people, there's, it's [00:18:00] particularly men of a certain age who I think it's a kind of a train set too, but most people look at it and they think, if I'd started a business, it would be like this.

It's very, it's an analog antidote to a increasingly confusing AI driven world, and it's so obviously simply human.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think 30 pairs of hands touch each eyes on average,

Speaker 2: yes. We are going to have to mechanize a bit, but that's simply because it's increasingly hard to recruit young men into the clay side of the business, which is a pity, but it the industry has its own itself to blame.

We, we weren't, I don't think, historically very responsible employers. But anyway, for lots of reasons, but primarily because there isn't an enormous demand. There are lots of people coming in to make the stuff. We will mechanize some of the making and focus on training people to do the interesting bits, but really the hand decorating is our, that's the [00:19:00] special thing that we do within still a very traditional making framework.

Speaker: Tell us about the kind of ideation process, because when you're thinking, oh, should we do a new object or a new pattern? Do you get all sorts of people in to, test things out and give you ideas? Is it all internally done?

Speaker 2: Interesting question.

For me, no. I think the creative process is doing things that, that being inspired is often it's to do with finding other people's energy. It's going to India. Last year I went to the Carmela. It was February biggest human gathering on the planet. An extraordinary Hindu festival of, incredibly compelling and beautiful.

That inspires me. And I don't come back and do a lot of, obviously Indian designs at all, but , it stirs me up to dig deeper and try harder. And I think I [00:20:00] look to the natural world around me. That's what I love the most. And I think most designers are really drawing from very early reference.

But what you need to find the energy to get really shoveled down into it and find some, new iterations. So I'm very keen that we. Sometimes even my, this is increasingly not going to be me, but what I have done for the last many years is think out a manifesto twice a year of themes that are going to be relevant in those months next year.

So we're usually about to the year ahead and that's now happening within the organization. Without me, I think the creative director and the head of design will be thinking that out. So sometimes you are the zeitgeist whispers to you about thing, to me about things that are going to be important little whispery voice that says, we are, we're taking the, our sort of pagan roots more seriously.

So I, I like delving into [00:21:00] that. For Mother's Day, for example. The children and I are talking about taking a picnic to one of the, we're arguing about where on the Ridgeway to go and have a picnic, perhaps Barberry Castle, maybe Huffington Castle or Waylon Smithy, all favorite places. Because for me there's a really exciting energy about neolithic sites and and what the ways in which our pagan souls are still alive in us, and that a lot of the most powerful things work because they tap into those feelings.

Speaker: Talking of feelings, objects carry bizarre

Freight power with people. I brought in an espresso cup that I made, and it's. Car is such an irrational sense of, I really care for it and then this it's

Speaker 2: rational but it's not rational.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. And then this was made through a friend of a friend in New York and she loves to know that it's still being used. You'll get so many stories of people. [00:22:00] Tell me about that object. My mother, for example, has got a ke That's Laura's,

Speaker 2: yeah,

Speaker: sorry.

Not a kettle. My mother tea's got a tea teat thing. Yeah. Laura's teapot. And it's just seeing the pleasure she gets from it. A countless pleasure. It's I don't know, it's like a mystery how objects, you were talking about, this primitive

Speaker 2: Methodist UMT plate

Speaker: and

Speaker 2: you, but okay, freight these things of yours.

They've got new freight in them, but. Imagine what, oh God. Look at these lovely old cups. Oh, this is the kind of thing I buy compulsively. Imagine the conversations they've overheard.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: Don't, don't,

Speaker: maybe this is the best conversation

Speaker 2: they could tell us, couldn't they?

Speaker: They can tell us,

Speaker 2: but look how marvelous they are.

The color I usually, they get used as ashtrays, and you can see I've got loads and loads of them.

Speaker: Do people write to you stories about do, would you

Speaker 2: want to? Oh God, we have

Speaker: to do that.

Speaker 2: When [00:23:00] I meet, we do collector events, but I hang out with the customers quite a bit along the way.

And for years I did goodness. Many trade fairs every year. And the wholesale customers are just as, they are the same

As the, they're predominantly women who understand just what you said, that these things really matter. They're chosen with. Extreme care and they matter.

They matter because of all the associated, so when I was thinking about mom's kitchen, I'm thinking of the kitchen table, what all those crocs have, all the meals, all the people, all the conversations, all the laughing and crying, all the big moments, and then the trivial grind. It's all told in teacups, I think.

Speaker: There are some objects, maybe it's from childhood to you that you sow treasure and they give you a sense of grounding, right? Is there an object you can think of like that?

Speaker 2: Trouble is quite a lot and I don't know if this is a bit of a [00:24:00] recent makeover because I'm showcasing kitties.

I really love kitties Welsh, my daughter kitties, Welsh blankets and fair oil. Sponge wear recently, but things like that, which I think masons that plate alphabet plate. That isn't from my childhood, but we had those, the very, very good news is people smash a lot of crockery. Yeah. I realized I was looking at a picture of my mom mom and I standing in her wheelchair kitchen with all the stuff behind and I've got one of the plates I can see, I know, still exists.

An enormous amount of the rest of it. My sisters, my brother, whatever, but it may still have some of it, but great deal of it. It gets ground to dust, which I like because it means they've got to come and buy some more from me.

Speaker: Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 2: Exactly. I do discourage, I obviously, I like people to wash these things up rather carefully and not put these beautiful things in the machine, but sadly things do get broken, so I have to go and buy more.

Speaker: Yeah. The repeat customer.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker: The repeat customer

Speaker 2: very important person.

But the [00:25:00] people who, so these are. They're totemic, aren't they? You could say that this is a it, it is to some extent the family altar. And these are the kind of

the es that furnish that it is important stuff.

But I like the fact that it is, it's profoundly important, but it's on quite a nice, cozy, smallish scale. We don't need to get too serious about it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel I'm privileged to have a very intimate relationship with people at their breakfast table, which is so nice.

It's not life and death, it's love and gossip and cups of tea. That's my involvement. And, but as you asked a very nice question earlier about, about presence, you called it gifting and I ticked you off and said, no, it's called giving presence. But I think that people. There's something so nice about the care with which we choose.

When we're giving presents and indeed we do make thousands and tens of thousands of personalized pieces. And here's [00:26:00] the joke I could remember from childhood , how much I'd loved having a mug that said, Emma. But when one of my sisters commissioned a different potter to make a plate for my dear sister, I wept.

I was completely blown away. And I hadn't realized just how lovely it is when someone makes something for you. It's amazing.

Speaker: But we live in such a weird world where you can order things so quickly now that these things carry so much weight. And there are people in the world, they didn't want, the second wash bag or you know what it, you get getting gifts, right?

[00:27:00] Getting gifts to mean something. It's not about what you spend, it's the thought, isn't it? Would you ever have, you have these beautiful plates. Could it work that people could write a letter and it could be printed?

Speaker 2: I did that at the beginning. Oh, okay. You're talking about digital printing, which I think may be coming.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. So I go on obvious. I go on your wonderful website, which everyone's gonna do. You'd be, clinically mad not to and you've already, you've written a letter. Could something like that be put on a plate? 'cause I'm,

Speaker 2: it's a very nice thought so far.

We've transcribed messages for people. And for possibly overly bossy reasons. There's a, there is a prescription.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But it's absolutely possible that we could be more accommodating. And I think what's coming is the, we've made very little use of digital. Printing for, the what you might put on a cup and saucer or a mug or whatever.

But it's coming and as the technology improves I get [00:28:00] more interested in it. And clearly at that point you could reproduce, if you could print it with a beautiful depth of color, which until now hasn't really been possible with digital ceramic printing. Then I'm on for it. I think it'd be lovely.

Speaker: Interestingly, you can type a message and then there's an AI pen. There are businesses that have these ai

Speaker 2: yes.

Speaker: And it looks like handwritten note.

Speaker 2: Yes. I'm, I, when I find that's what happens on legal documents and there's this weird fake of my signature, I get quite cross burdened.

But I'd, I love the idea that that you could use the a, the size of the center, of the side plate. So we'd say, it's a five inch circle or whatever it is and you write life sized bit of a Oh, we can shrink it to go in the middle.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I, that would seem to me I'd rather it was in your handwriting.

Yeah. And it's so nice that you ask that nobody ever has, at the beginning I wrote all my thank you letters on when I was amongst my samples. Exactly, yes. I, it seems to me to be obvious, but that has never, that hasn't traveled. But I think it should be a, we [00:29:00] should be able to do that.

We should be able to put your thank you letter on a plate.

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker 2: Or mug.

Speaker: Totally. It'd

Speaker 2: be nice, wouldn't it?

Speaker: But Jaws would drop.

Speaker 2: Yeah. We

Speaker: emotions, let out Cheers.

Speaker 2: Might even be shared.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Not something that hasn't happened

Speaker 2: already. And it was also a very good excuse for quite a late thank you letter.

Speaker: Yeah, totally. Totally. Oh so you talked a bit about themes. So you know, really planning ahead, you are very light. Like the way, you say, oh, I'm, I get on do things. I don't, I'm like, someone else's is on checking things, but clearly you are checking everything, have crazy attention to detail.

Now there are so many ways of, getting into people's mind, things becoming relevant for so many different people. And media is obviously really exciting and but also busy place.

I know that you've done a collaboration with Didley Squad Jeremy Cox, and

Speaker 2: that's been Extraordinarys very busy.

Speaker: It feels like there's so many amazing collaborations, with film. Have you ever done one with a film, for example, or,

Speaker 2: short answer, no. We I'm just trying to think of what other, as

Speaker: Richard, he's Quietly got a [00:30:00] film. I'm thinking I know what I was doing.

Speaker 2: Listen, I always am always slightly annoyed that there aren't more pieces in the background in any of his films. I think they should be there.

Speaker: Lots of, I

Speaker 2: dunno, I quite, there's a part of me that's okay. I am quite puritanical. I think you do what you do and you do it really well and you do it with integrity and then you become part of, life and it crops up all over the place.

I suspect the next iteration of the company will have more calculated kind of planning of these things I've just done. What I could do, I don't feel, I'm gonna find, like I wasn't really that interested in export. It seemed to me the fun would be to be a very much an English proposition.

That when people get to London and they find, driving around England, they find something that they've never seen before. That would be such a novel experience. And as as every, everything is universal. I'm increasingly [00:31:00] obstinately not that interested in trying to do everything I feel, do what you do really in a really heartfelt way.

Don't, you don't have to do everything. And when an idea crops up, so the first James Bond film that Daniel Craig made the various au pairs and cleaning ladies and whatever in my life. And I shared enormous pleasure in Daniel Craig's first outing as James Bond.

And so I did a teet detail that said, last night I had a lovely dream about Daniel Craig. And there was oh God, you can't do that. Can't do that. We haven't got permission. I said, why don't. Do it and see, and if he minds, I'll probably get to hear about it. In fact, what I heard on the kind of grapevine was that he had given his mom one and he didn't mind at all, but , we did get a note from his agent saying when he signed up for the second one going, no more details.

But, so I think you do you, I, I like, for me, I like operating at [00:32:00] that level rather than the big orchestrated tie up.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that the big orchestrated tie ups a bad thing, but I just, it's not my bag. Someone else will do it.

Speaker: That Daniel Craig story is fantastic. Have you got any others? We haven't gotten you from it.

Speaker 2: No, not really. I wrote, I love You more than Elvis on a big mug. And again, there was a freak out of, God, he, the estate will sue us to our pants fall down.

And I said why don't we just wait and see if they do. And we can just apologize and say we won't do it again. There was never any squeak. I don't think we probably sold that many of them 'cause it was a long time ago.

But I think just, publish and be damned.

And if it's wrong then apologize and desist if someone does mind. Because by and large, you, I would never be saying anything rude. If you are on the spot you want to be referenced, don't you? It's it's good.

Speaker: Totally. There mostly be places that you want your products in, like at hotel or,

Speaker 2: It's in quite a lot of them.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Not hotels in much. When we had West End [00:33:00] Shops, Harvey Nichols had a very good updo, probably in the nineties we had a shop in there and we had a shop in Marin and one in the Ham road, and there was. Some very good celebrity traffic, which we were always, and would always be completely discreet about, but yeah, it was very pleasing.

It was going to all sorts of nice places. Yeah.

Speaker: What happens when you see, your you have to swing into a friend of a friend's place and one of your wonderful product

Speaker 2: Tom just pleased. I won't, I, it makes me feel very happy. The funniest thing was watching that effect on my children as they, when they were quite little, finding our poria, the stuff we've got at home in their friend's mother's gis.

Speaker: Yeah. That's awesome.

Speaker 2: And then realize, and when Michael was helping in the factory, one half term or whatever, aged about five or six or maybe six or something like that, he looked up from whatever he was probably decorating some pottery. He looked up and said, mom, are you like. Are you like the headmaster [00:34:00] here?

I liked watching their dawning as a realization that it was a phenomenon in a small way, but, and that some of their friends moms really liked an aboriginal to pottery. That, that, that was, that really gave me an enormous joy seeing their kind of,

Speaker: this is you.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I couldn't find a salt holder on your website.

No. Do you produce those?

Speaker 2: No. Is

Speaker: that with,

Speaker 2: I would probably, is that

Speaker: deliberate?

Speaker 2: There was something okay. Mom always used mold and salt. There might be a bit of saxa in the kitchen for the vegetable water or whatever, but, and she always had it. The salt was always in a glass. small glass bulb bowl with bubbles in it that got smashed along the way.

And so I tend to use, I pick a nice cup that I like and I'll put salt in that on the table.

Speaker: Yeah.

If the world said to you, we want salt holder, would you maybe,

Speaker 2: I'm not sure what it would look like. I just like it to be a nice bit of bo boel glass little

Speaker: box, small low box.

Speaker 2: It could be, do you think it [00:35:00] would be a good thing?

Because I'm

Speaker: sadly, I'm paddy. You haven't got one?

Speaker 2: Okay. I like a wooden pepper grinder or Indeed. I quite often grind so much pepper that I'll use a PEs on mortar. But I like less kit. I like, some brutally sharp knives, steel, not stainless old steel that you can chop to a really good, that'll keep an edge and a nice chopping board and a pestle of mortar.

I don't really go in, I don't want to proliferate too many one use only things in my life. Does that make sense?

Speaker: Yeah, that does make sense.

Speaker 2: And if you, the more kit you buy, the more you clutter up the back of the cupboard.

Speaker: Yeah. Are there objects that aren't made of clay that you think should be?

Speaker 2: No. I do think that the stoke potters were very ingenious and they dreamt up all kinds of crazy things that they could make, most of which we really don't need. For me, sim simple is better and I want people to mix my [00:36:00] stuff with other things, and here we are. I love how that you brought that mug in from the kitchen.

But that I would always freely mix it up. So there's two pieces of Bri on the table and a whole lot of other things. And that's, for me, that's the reality. It's like your favorite jeans. It's not like a uniform that you wear all the time.

Speaker: And there's people who are obsessed by your brand. Can you tell us about them?

You know that they are, maybe big collectors, maybe obsessed about the heritage and most people won't know about what a backs stamp is. So the markings underneath each item. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2: They are all the hand printed, the sponge wear is signed by the decorator. If that's a sample, it might have a generic thing. No, it's got someone's I should know who's that is called bb. I don't it's not. So some of the collectors follow specific decorators which I completely [00:37:00] love.

Collecting pottery is a phenomenon that I hadn't realized it has long antecedents. I was doing a talk for the collectors in the factory one day and I'd invited one of curators from lovely Trent Museum, which has got a blisteringly fantastic ceramics collection, obviously.

And he. He stopped the conversation and said, hang on. There's collectors clubs, they're a thing. How many of you, is there anyone here? This is the Emma Bridgewater was the last collectors club in the sort of last man standing as far as I know. And the one last one to go was Dalton.

Is anyone in the room here? Were you members of the Dalton Collectors Club? And to my amazement, about half the room put their hands up. So I was their next choice as a brand to collect. And I think so there's a, so there's this business of treating it very seriously and collecting it.

In extraordinary amounts. It has provenance. It's not just me. [00:38:00] It. One of the things that happens, my hunch is that traditionally women haven't had that much agency when it came to spending the domestic budget. They'd have to reference almost every decision to their husband because it's only about two generations we've been earning alongside our husbands.

And yet associated with the idea of your sort of trusso and your dowry or whatever women did, I think almost always choose the domestic China. That was an area where you didn't have to ask, and so on a wedding list or when you got married, you'd choose a pattern and that sort of was your, it was part of your signature and just how you defined your domestic life.

It was quite an important marker that you were putting down. So there is a sort of affinity, I think we've all women have had a BDI on ceramics as something that kind of, it's talking to us. And our husbands aren't, we're not bothered to, then it [00:39:00] wasn't really to do with them, it was to do with us and our friends and our mom and our daughters.

And I think that runs, that river still runs through it. EBay has also offered collectors an opportunity to resell some of what they buy to finance their collections. Again, that proba probably, different, pre-digital versions of that have always happened.

But the, there's I'm really fascinated by the ecology of eBay and we don't participate in that from time to time.

Incomes to the company say, oh, we should be in involved in this. And I think it's really interesting that the stuff sells people, the collectors understand that's something that was made in very small numbers. They just seem to know that. And some of them come on the tour regularly to try and scope out which patterns we're making a lot of, because they know that those won't have such a good resale value.

Whereas something that's been quite scarce

Or that came and went very quickly or that whatever if they like it, they'll [00:40:00] buy that and they may well be able to get a huge price for it a few months later. If you look at the resale prices, they're quite healthy and that's exciting.

And I feel it. We should let that alone. But, so again, I'm not a great one for intervening. I think Do the thing you do it with integrity.

And make sure, I've, I'm lucky. It's something that I feel very, I love the product and then I found Stoke and I realized there was this incredible city where.

They know about making things and making them really beautifully

Speaker: and looking ahead for the business. What are you excited about?

Speaker 2: I'm excited that the current CEO and the executive team are every bit as enthusiastic as I am about making a stoke. Because the thing that bothers me is, will it survive after me because my children aren't going into the business?

And it's very tempting, I think for people coming in from the outside to look at it and say, marvelous. But surely we could make [00:41:00] a bit more money if we made it more cheap. Somewhere labor is cheaper and I really hope that doesn't happen. But all I can do is try and instill, it's happened and I feel very moved by that.

I would say that the the current team are. As excited as me or more even about the factory in Stoke and the Staffordshire provenance of it. So that's good.

That, so what happens in the future?

Speaker: The great thing is, I don't know.

Speaker 2: And I can't affect that. I, but I've got a good feeling that it will truck on.

If it goes on, how do you maintain the integrity of a brand famously, it doesn't happen but it doesn't, maybe it doesn't. It's not for me to control that.

I feel quite fateful about it , but also optimistic.

 I used to worry about Laura Ashley, who was one of the great, there's a huge inspiration to me as a teenager. I loved [00:42:00] those dresses so much, and I loved when Laura Ashley opened a shop in Oxford for a bit. Just spent so much time in there riffling through the different prints. And when she died, rather, sadly, early on, younger than I am now, I think I felt an enormous sense of sadness and the company quickly became something that I didn't really recognize and I thought that mattered.

And now I realized that I kept, and I buy when I find them, the early dresses, the ones with the big square labels that were printed and made in Wales in the seventies, and they're just wonderful things. It's wonderful that they're in the world and those prints exist and that, that catalog of what those things.

So it's there for somebody to, to take up again later. It's having a, it's having a life still as a brand, but someone can go back and. Look at how William Morris's things have stayed in the

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The canon

Speaker: history. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Sorry. Never,

Speaker: you never lose the history.

Speaker 2: No. It's all still there. Once it's done. And [00:43:00] people can go back and pick that up and do lovely things with it later. So it's I

Speaker: it's not

Speaker 2: very, it's not something that fre me.

Speaker: It's not great.

Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And I feel, I've put my name on an awful lot of mugs

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Plates that have gone out into the world and that's, that feels like fun.

Speaker: Have you ever called anyone a mug?

Speaker 2: I'm sure I have.

Speaker: Okay. So we're going to go through some photos of your wonderful products. And maybe, we'll go through perhaps a, a comment or two on each one, and then I can ask you some quick questions and then Oh,

Speaker 2: okay.

Speaker: And then I know your hair. So here we are.

Speaker 2: Jason Marmalade,

Speaker: this one.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker: And why is it, why are the plates of certain thickness? Is that,

Speaker 2: It's just the making, but what has happened over the years is sometimes they get a bit fatter, sometimes they get a bit thinner. I like them thin.

I like them thin as popper Doms really? But they aren't because with earth and wear, you need a sort of, that, that's a, that's where they are. The median is both practical and aesthetically.

Speaker: And 'cause you [00:44:00] use a mix of clays that are all from the uk, is it quite hard to maintain, inevitably to imagine there are changes in the clay itself, but obviously the product is

Speaker 2: ish

Speaker: consistent?

Yeah,

Speaker 2: This is something that obviously that was very highly developed. And stok the size we are now, 50 years ago, we'd probably have been milling our own cake mix. You know what I mean? Making our own batter. But it's fine. We're talking about chemists and engineers who know what they're doing.

Yeah. The people who make the mix for us, who make the clay don't change it.

Speaker: Yeah. And your classic mark, can you tell us something about, why it's, why there, it's got that sort of thick red at the bottom or the particular, the

Speaker 2: turned foot if you pass me that one. That just felt like the right mug.

And I did know right at the beginning it was going to be hugely a mug story. But I wanted them to, wanted there to be ato a dress, a story. I needed plates and teapots and stuff. But it is really about a very pleasing mug. [00:45:00] And I also like the smaller size. I used that almost more. What I did was to collect a whole all.

In one room, lots and lots of different mugs from granny, from a house in Chelsea, very sometimes roosted and worked out what were the characteristics , and I had mugs here and jugs and bulls, and that was really what it was about at the beginning. It's, and a big dish. So I'd made four shapes at the beginning.

And that was the very first. And we got a friend and I got that turned from a drawing into a block of wood so that we could look at the turned foot. Now, in a perfect world that, or, I mean it's an, it's a kind of tribute to an older Stafford Ger make where that would've been thrown, turned on a lathe, and then the handle put on separately.

We cast the whole thing as one, but it's I wanted the flavor of Stafford Ger and. That's what that feels like to me.

Speaker: And if we look at the butter dish, did you have a team [00:46:00] that, when you first went into the butter dish?

Speaker 2: No, I just drew it

Speaker: arena. You'd, so you, the,

Speaker 2: I drew the piece on a, in my sketchbook and then I talked to a model maker and the first one was quite big, and then we shrunk it down.

And it seems like the butter industry's followed us and the butter parts are getting smaller. Have you noticed the shrink iation? Very naughty, but the shapes are are almost all drawn by me.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then I'll, argue with them about how stable they can make the lid and all that kind of thing.

Speaker: And why this particular color was there any

Speaker 2: It partly it's what Sam, the first guy who made for me 'cause I didn't intend to, to. To own a factory. I thought I would work with a stoke potter, which I did for five years. And this is what Sam was making in. And he did the modeling of the first four shapes actually, and another, the next dozen or so.

But I was really thrilled. Half the time he was cut putting a colored glaze on it or something like that. So it's a very straight down the middle [00:47:00] of the roads, Staffordshire cream earthenware. And we make it well enough that you don't have to cover it in a colored glaze,

Speaker: right?

Speaker 2: Back in the day, if people who were making real cheap and cheerful stuff of market source, whatever they would always have to hide the clay 'cause they'd be buying it cheap.

And it would be very varied in color.

Speaker: So that's not been painted?

Speaker 2: No, that's the, that is the clay.

Speaker: That is the clay

Speaker 2: where the

Speaker: yeah.

Speaker 2: With a pattern hand printed onto it and then dipped in glaze very skillfully to put that very fine skin of glass on it.

Speaker: Yeah. Emma, thank you so much for

Speaker 2: It's a pleasure.

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[00:48:00] Thanks so much for listening.