Toast & Marmalade and Other Stories

Emma Bridgewater's cheerfully distinctive kitchen pottery - manufactured and traditionally hand-decorated in the Staffordshire Potteries, just as it would have been 200 years ago - has found its way onto the dresser shelves and kitchen tables of homes all over Britain and beyond.

Her designs are jaunty, friendly, sometimes quietly funny. They call to mind childhood picnics, summer gardens and busy kitchens, with their motifs of Sweet Peas and Figs or bold calligraphic patterns such as Toast & Marmalade. Above all the name Emma Bridgewater suggests home and welcome.

This book combines beautiful photographs of Emma's life and designs with a collection of warm stories of her family, along with the inspirations for and characters involved in the success of this particularly English brand.

Emma Bridgewater established her successful pottery business in 1985. She found a manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent to produce a range of mugs, jugs and teapots inspired by traditional shapes and spongeware designs. She now employs over 230 people and continues to make all her ceramics in Staffordshire, the historic home of pottery manufacture in Britain. Emma is married with four children and lives outside Oxford, where she was brought up.

Follow Emma on Twitter: @EmmaBridgewater www.emmabridgewater.co.uk