Emma Bridgewater grew up in North Oxford, England. She started designing sponge-decorated pottery after searching and failing to find the perfect cup and saucer as a birthday present for her mother. 

 

After college and working in the fashion industry, Emma began a small collection of patterns and shapes and went to Stoke-on-Trent, in search of a manufacturer, she fortunately found in a talented model-maker with a small workshop making quality earthenware goods in Chemical Lane, Longbridge Hayes. He started making Emma’s pottery and before long almost his entire factory was turned over to the production of her spongeware.

 

Emma Bridgewater Pottery is still produced today in an enormous Victorian pottery factory alongside the Caulden Canal in Stoke-on-Trent.