Black Ryden pottery will be launched next week

The Stoke-on-Trent pottery firm Moorcroft, is bucking the trend in the pottery industry by opening a new factory and creating 180 new jobs.

The site in Cobridge is being built specially to create the firm's new range of pottery, Black Ryden, which is launched next week.

Hugh Edwards, from Moorcroft, said the future of the pottery industry lay in the smaller, specialist firms producing high quality goods.

He told BBC Radio Stoke: "There are, the Ceramic Industry Forum calculates, well over 200 small potteries in the city.

International success

"It is in those 200 potteries, that we see the growth of the city coming."

In December last year, the company said much of its international success was down to a young pottery designer from Biddulph.

Emma Bossons' work for the firm sells for more than �11,000 to collectors all over the world.

The 26-year-old has created a range called Echoes for Black Ryden.

She said: "I am pleased with Echoes.

"Fortunately I was able to marry an unusual design to even more unusual shapes."