A mentorship with Emma Bridgewater

and Country Living’s 40 Best Artisans 2025

At the award ceremony in November the eight makers chosen for the mentorship were gifted a personalised Emma Bridgewater mug

At the end of last year we were selected as one of Country Living Magazine’s 40 Best Artisans 2025, and on top of that, we were also chosen as one of just eight makers to receive a personal mentorship with Emma Bridgewater.

This recognition has felt like a huge milestone in our journey, and a great honour to be celebrated for our values of craftsmanship, care, and a deep connection to the materials and traditions that inspire our work.

2025 marked Country Living magazine’s 40th birthday. For four decades, the magazine has been dedicated to supporting makers, preserving heritage crafts, and sharing the stories of those who create. To commemorate this milestone, the brand launched a special initiative designed to spotlight the very best of British craftsmanship, with dame Emma Bridgewater, who started her brand the same year, serving as awards patron.

Seeking small businesses, makers and producers across a range of artisanal and heritage crafts, the team received hundreds of applications from across the UK.

A panel of Country Living editors and industry experts undertook a rigorous judging process, carefully reviewing each entry to identify those with a clear passion for craftsmanship, quality and sustainability, from potters and textile artists to weavers, cheesemakers and blacksmiths.

A Celebration of British Craft

Emma Bridgewater - from her website emmabridgewater.co.uk

“We believe everyday kitchen china sits right at the heart of our lives, and that each cup, bowl, jug, and plate holds our personal stories, reflecting shared moments, enriching us as we eat and drink together. Each design starts as a deeply felt personal response to what we love in the world around us.”
— Emma Bridgewater

These values, central to the Emma Bridgewater brand, are those shared among all craft makers. The physical and intellectual creative investment in the pieces we make to contribute to daily life connects us in the past, present and future, to our community, landscape, and the materials we work with.

An Unforgettable Opportunity

The eight of us chosen for the mentorship were recently invited to spend a day at the Emma Bridgewater factory, to see behind the scenes and learn more about the history of pottery in Stoke-on-Trent. We glimpsed some new designs and business strategies, learning about how Emma and CEO Iain Martin are nurturing and strengthening the Emma Bridgewater brand, which currently employs 350 people making pots in Stoke-on-Trent.

It was inspiring to witness their dedication to British manufacturing. Although the brand operates at an entirely different scale to Carpenter & Cloth (which in absolute honesty felt hugely daunting!) it was both motivating in terms of what possibilities may lay ahead for us and deeply affirming in the choices we have made this far in how and why we want to do things differently.

Honouring the Past, Inspiring the Future

Ultimately, to be recognised among such an inspiring group of makers is an honour, but the significance of these awards extends beyond recognition. 

The mechanisation and growth of industry has let our understanding of craft slip into being predominantly a leisure activity. As valuable as that is, if it can’t have priority in peoples lives, such skills and knowledge will be lost. 

This award celebrates crafts that are at risk of fading from view, and supports artisans who are not only preserving tradition but evolving it for contemporary audiences.

As Country Living reflects on 40 years of storytelling and craftsmanship, the awards stand as a fitting tribute to the makers who have always been at the heart of the brand; a celebration of the past, and a commitment to supporting the future of British craftsmanship.

Thank You

But, all of that aside, we wouldn’t be here without the support of our customers, community, and everyone who believes in the value of handmade work. Thank you for being part of our journey — we owe this recognition as much to your support as our own hard work.

Here’s to continuing to create, learn, and celebrate craftsmanship together.

Mending ...meanderings

At Christmas time I was handed one of our early Cambrian Gilets for repair. Having been accidently bundled up with a pile of clothing after autumn flooding, it had an unfortunate encounter with the washing machine and the soft wool thermal layer had succumbed to the rigorous tumbling. However, having become such a treasured garment, the owner was determined to try and rejuvenate it. After meticulously unpicking the layers, I was handed the surviving outer and commissioned to attach a whole new inner. The result was almost like new, but somehow more… 

Migrants, industrialisation and black gold...

The story of who we are and the land that we live in is shaped by the stories all around us, influenced by politics, inventions, immigration - we may be an island, but we do not exist in isolation. So, with our new shirt, I decided to tell one of those stories; it is made from a very beautiful, fine and luxurious Italian wool, but in the same simple cut as our original flannel work shirts. It echoes a convergence of culture that occurred at the turn of the last century and is still visible today throughout the towns and cities of South Wales…

Surviving as an independent maker in the fringes of global industry.

The backbones of the Welsh textile industry are both its treasures and its torture. As far as I know, all of our mills except Melin Tregwynt, run on beautiful but geriatric looms, many of them now around 100 years old. While other parts of the UK - and the rest of the world - invested in new machinery and upped their production capacities, rural Wales, for a blurry, myriad of reasons, chugged along with what they had.

Daniel told me that, using one of these old looms, it can take a few days to weave the same amount of cloth that a modern loom can produce in about 3 hours…

Spalting; fungal warfare and beech table tops

The dark lines mark the path of fungi through the wood, delineating the front line of battle where different fungi meet each other in a clash for dominance over the next section of lignin (which, combined with cellulose, makes the cell walls of all woody plants). Before fungi evolved to break down the lignin, fallen trees and other plant matter piled in layers and layers on top of each other, becoming crushed by millennia of carbon matter, eventually, of course, forming the coal seams that fuelled industrialisation.

What happens to all of the wool?

There are a lot of sheep in Wales. I often hear people wondering what on earth happens to all of the wool - and how they can buy it. These days it is mostly bought by large companies for making building insulation or goes to national sorting depots where it gets graded by quality and sold at global auction (by the tonne). The huge scale of the operation means that small mills have not been able to compete on price, and so we have inevitably lost almost all of the wool processing services in Wales. But of course, when you gain in economy, you usually loose in provenance.

Here in Carmarthenshire, in fact, within an hours drive of Carpenter and Cloth base camp, we are incredibly lucky to still have a commercial woollen mill. Our mill is not only operating at a manageable scale for independent makers, but can sort and scour (clean) fleeces, card (comb) then and spin the yarn as well as weave the cloth. To offer all of these services in one place is no small feat and requires a huge wealth of knowledge, skills and equipment.

Shearing Black Welsh Moutain

So, when shearing time was nigh, I approached two of my farming neighbours to see if I could buy their wool straight off the farm. I was able to pick and roll my fleeces right from under the shearers feet, and got enough Black Welsh Mountain and Ryeland wool to commission 67m of beautiful herringbone cloth!

Barn Ryelands
Sorting the wool
Yarns

From delivering my 30 fleeces to the mill it took 9 months to receive back my 2 rolls of cloth, but it is absolutely perfect for our Cambrian Gilet! It is dense and hard wearing, but with good movement and on top of all of that, it is the cloth produced by the land in which we live.

Welsh Wool gilet close-up by Carpenter & Cloth

As clothing and textiles have become such massive scale industries, most of us have lost any idea of how our clothing might connect us with a sense of place or belonging in a geographical and environmental sense… but I think that is a blog post for another day!

In terms of national wool production, my little operation is a drop in hills, but I hope it demonstrates what can be done if we just stick to what we believe in. Buy less, buy better ….and all that.

Carpenter & Cloth
Slow-made garments, crafted woodwork, and thoughtful living from the Welsh borders. Every piece we make tells a story of place, material, and purpose.

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