At the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke-on Trent even the Agas are covered in polka dots. We observed this when we arrived, cakes in hand, for the Open Day and Factory Tour. As we checked in at a wooden table in the yard with everyone in summer garb, bunting and flags abounding and excited children running about, it felt more like we had arrived at a rural village fete than at a working factory in an industrial metropolis.
‘How do you spell pistachio?’ asked a lovely girl who might have been called ‘Poppy’ and who rolled her eyes in respect at the inviting green speckled meringues that Elder Daughter was presenting. Poppy was writing labels. Behind us a woman handed over a cake still in its packaging, no doubt on the principle that when in doubt go to Marks and Spencer. A young lad in a polka dot pinny laid the cakes out on a big table in front of the Agas. ‘You’re just in time for the factory tour,’ he said, calling to someone else with a floral name to escort us.
Emma Bridgewater started this enterprise 25 years ago and is intimately involved with everything that goes on. The style is relaxed, informal, polite, courteous, the staff like long lost cousins met at a wedding. Style rather than money drives the business. Of course, you could make pots more cheaply in China, but you’d be selling your soul.
So they manufacture in England, still by hand, in this old Stoke factory, solidly built of brick and iron a century or more ago. Yet such has been the success of the Bridgewater brand - the growth rate is some 20 per cent a year - that the factory is already becoming too small.
I have always loved factory tours. I enjoy seeing how things are made, stored, finished, transported. Most of the 25,000 pieces that the factory produces each week, so the factory manager told us, start life as a grey slurry of clay-in-water called ‘slip’ which they use to fill plaster of Paris moulds. Far back in the mists of time someone apparently discovered that plaster absorbs water and that if you make a depression in your plaster, and fill this with slip, then the plaster will cause the slip to solidify from the outside in. So after a time you can then pour away the liquid slip and be left with a bowl, or a mug, teapot or whatever adhering to the sides of the mould. This you remove and bake in a kiln. Simple really.
Those that made the pots all seemed to be men. They worked very fast and with great accuracy and wore, for a reason I never did discover, a kind of white surgical gown. By contrast the decorators all seemed to be women, also working with great accuracy. Some decoration is applied using lithographic transfers; some with sponges finely cut from upholstery foam and dipped in colour. It seems an odd and time-consuming process, but the results are truly unique. Each decorator puts her own mark on the underside of the piece; for some collectors will only purchase pieces decorated by the same person.
A beautiful lunch followed. And it was beautiful because perhaps only on long refectory benches can you really appreciate the crockery. We might have expected to eat our hog roast and salad from paper plates and to drink from plastic beakers laid on tables with covered with paper. But no! Style comes first. The food came on Bridgewater plates; we drank from Bridgewater mugs and the tables were covered with Bridgewater oilcloths; a cumulative effect that could only be described as magnificent.
We had just about finished when a voice behind me said, “shall I take those?” I started to stack the plates. “Oh, don’t worry about stacking them,” she said. “We’ll see to that.”
“Oh fine!” I looked up and nearly dropped the plates. It was Emma Bridgewater herself, helping to clear the dishes. Now that’s style, I thought.
After lunch we found the factory shop. I had told myself that I wouldn’t be buying anything; my funds at the moment resemble the Government’s. But I chanced upon a rack of six-pint jugs in the Black Toast range and thought to myself what magnificent pieces they were and in my mind’s eye conjured up how good one of these jugs with its lettering of ‘Daisies and Cow Parsley‘ would look full of Pimms on a summer afternoon. They were marked down to £42. A snip, I thought. And an investment too, I persuaded myself. Pity about the lack of funds. But then, weakling that I am, I kept thinking of Pimms and summer afternoons and maybe I thought, too, of Emma Bridgewater clearing the dishes, and eventually I pulled out my card.
