More than one Stoke pottery factory is now expanding and leading the way is Bridgewater’s company

Once news of a royal engagement would have sent the potters of Stoke-on-Trent hurrying towards their kilns to produce commemorative mugs: today there are fewer factories in a town that is still proud to call itself the ceramics capital of the world. Many famous names have vanished or shrunk to a fraction of their former size: Wedgwood, Spode and Minton among them. Manufacturing, conventional wisdom says, is done more cheaply and efficiently abroad. But more than one Stoke factory is now expanding. Leading the way is a company created 25 years ago by the designer Emma Bridgewater. Her polka-dot earthenware mugs and plates are made in a restored 19th-century factory by the Caldon canal which once carried the city’s trade. The company now employs 240 people, and increased its profits by 40% last year. It is one of the largest ceramics firms left in a city which still had around 200 factories in 1970. The story of Stoke’s decline is described in a new book by Emma Bridgewater’s husband, and fellow designer, Matthew Rice. The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent records a collapse of confidence which brought the demolition of much of Stoke’s industrial heritage. Fine old buildings and bottle kilns have been flattened. Emma Bridgewater’s business has shown that Stoke’s past can also be part of its future: skilled manufacturing can still support good jobs in Britain. Last night an event in Stoke marked the book’s publication, and perhaps the revival of pottery-making in the potteries.

Business: Manufacturing sector | guardian.co.uk