‘My plan to save the Potteries – one tile at a time’

Over the judder and buzz of a clay-extruding machine, Sarah Watson and her business partner Paul Gibson are giving me a tour of their factory, Phoenix Tile Studio. Located in an industrial area of Newcastle-under- Lyme – the West Midlands town that neighbours the city of Stoke-on-Trent – “it’s not beautiful by any means”, warns Watson, the founder of bathware brand Balineum. It has none of the historic red-brick charm that can be found elsewhere in the ceramics industry’s once…