The Emma Bridgewater Decorating Studio -

Mr Thrifty and artistically challenged moi took a short drive down the motorway to Stoke a couple of weeks ago to visit The Emma Bridgewater Decorating Studio. I’m a big fan of Emma Bridgewater stuff but most of the Bridgewater items we own here at Thrifty Towers have our own little touch to them because we’d stamped the patterns on ourselves.

We’d been to the decorating studio four or five times prior to this so knew what we were doing, nevertheless we were excited and a little bit nervous. The process of decorating a piece at the Emma Bridgewater Decorating Studio couldn’t be more laid back (plus the staff and artists are the nicest I’ve come across) but I find myself getting nervous knowing that my lack of artistic eye could let me down (how they allowed me to do GCSE Art is beyond me.) We had the painting studio to ourselves that day, so plonked ourselves in the middle of room then grabbed tea and cake before deciding on patterns. There hundreds (if not thousands) or different motifs cut into sponges in just about every shape, pattern and size you can think of. After spending a good half an hour or so going through the pots trying to find the shapes we fancied we set about our work. There is something really soothing about printing onto the plates (or whatever item you pick out) with the painted sponges.

I went for a London themed pattern with post boxes, guards, carriages and crowns. Quite royalist someone entirely unroyalist like me, blame the royal wedding. Mr Thrifty went for the pirate look with skull and crossbones, a treasure chest and cutlass arrr m’hearties. We faffed around for a good few hours in there, taking our time over our cake (eggs from the Bantams out back) before having a poke around the huge seconds shop in order to stock up on cheap gifts for Christmas (I know, I know.) We spent about £45 for the whole thing (including tea & cake x2, the pieces of pottery, the cost of painting (and having them fired afterward) and the special delivery of the items two weeks later) which I don’t think is too bad for a good day out and a piece of pottery to keep forever considering an Emma Bridgewater piece can easily cost upwards of £15 per item.