Emma is my sister, and like bookends she is the oldest of our four siblings, and I am the youngest. Most ofmy earliestmemories involve being taken swimming with Emma, or going on picnics with her and a group of her friends, who were pretty good humoured about acting as childminders to me and my next sister, Nell.

When I was ten Emma brought home cut out sponges and coloured paint. At the kitchen table she told me about some pottery she wanted to make, and showed me how to make patterns using the sponges. She drew patterns of chickens and roses and said that if she could find a factory to make her cups, she would be using a technique called sponge-ware and that the last people tomake pottery like this were the Victorians. Then she left, bundling her patterns into the back of her bright red VW Golf, and drove to Stoke-on-Trent to look for a factory. Live Aid was on television, and Princess Diana had been married for four years.

After that, Emma always brought new designs home for us to look at. There were flying ducks on a jug that Mum filled with daffodils on Easter day, and a mug with bows and FOR A GOOD GIRL sponged onto it. Mum liked her quail patterns as they reminded her of her old tea cups, and everyone loved Farmyard. We used her pottery every day.

When I was a young teenager I went to help Emma at one of her first trade fairs in London where she was taking orders from suppliers I recognised: The Conran Shop, or Harvey Nicholls. She wore gold earrings shaped like knots and a boxy jacket with big shoulders. Now she was producing not just cups and jugs,but plates, teapots, bowls and soup tureens, all decorated with bold patterns called Chintz, Fig, Vine and Farmyard. The dresser at home was piled with her pottery, beside Mum’s Coronation mugs,cracked Victorian serving plates and enamel picnic mugs that had always been part of kitchen life at home.

I was a bridesmaid when Emma married Matthew; the generational boundaries

Emma Bridgewater is the oldest daughter in a large family and her mother Char provided the first inspiration for her as a designer. Emma grew up in Oxford, where her mother’s welcoming kitchen was dominated by a scrubbed pine kitchen table and a big dresser covered in colourful, mismatched china including big Victorian meat plates, pretty cups and saucers and generous jugs big enough for a bunch of flowers from the garden. An early exponent of kitchen living, with rush matting on the floor and Elizabeth David’s cookbooks on the window sill, Char Stroud’s taste defined relaxed, easy living. Emma’s father started, built up and eventually sold, a publishing business; this gave Emma an insight into entrepreneurial life.

Emma graduated from London University with a degree in English Literature. Her first and only job was working for knitwear designers Muir & Osborne. She became involved in every aspect of this small fashion company and it gave her the taste for doing something for herself.

Matthew trained as a theatre designer, and subsequently designed bespoke furniture. He also produced a range of stationery and desk accessories featuring his watercolour paintings of Venice, country houses and farms.

Emma and Matthew met when they were both selling their products at London trade fair Top Drawer.