It's a family thing, me old china (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

It's a family thing, me old china

Tucked away in a converted cinema in Fordingbridge is one of the New Forest's best-kept secrets. Lesley Bates takes a tour of Branksome China.

THE French have words for women like Elaine Baggaley. "Formidable," they would say, "trs, trs formidable". Small and neat, she is, nonetheless, a huge presence centred on a backbone of pure steel.

She scolds me several times for taking notes instead of watching and listening as she guides me through the history and process of making Branksome China.

"I'll tell you everything again in a minute," she says. And she can and she does - almost word for word.

But this is no script learned by rote.

Like those in a stick of seaside rock, the words are, you sense, chiselled right through the centre of her body.

She won't thank me for focusing attention on her rather than the china, but the family business is so much a part of her life that the two are indivisible.

She married into it as a 24-year-old after she and her parents moved in next door to confirmed bachelor Ernest Baggaley, then the 48-year-old founder and managing director of Branksome Ceramics.

Her poodle met his boxer and that, more or less, was that.

"It took me a year to persuade him to marry me," she says, her eyes twinkling.

"It was a year-and-a-half before I called him anything but Mr Baggaley.

"When I first met him, he employed more than 100 people in Bournemouth.

"All the girls in the factory were in love with him and couldn't believe he was going to marry."

But, she makes it clear, I am not here to talk about her but about the china and the business, and we are off on the factory tour, with Elaine churning out facts at dizzying speed, as she whips round racks of tableware and animal figurines.

There are manufacturing tools with marvellously evocative names such as blungers, pugs and cottles.

All the clay trimmed off is recycled, she says, demonstrating.

She tells me about shrinkage, firing, how many times a mould is used and glazing techniques - it's fascinating but exhausting as I try to keep pace with her.

"I'm 75 and will be here until I'm 90 or I drop dead," she tells me crisply.

Branksome China is in the middle of a trio of milestone anniversaries in its history.

Last year, was the birth centenary of Ernest Baggaley, this year marks the diamond jubilee of the company's foundation and next year will see the 40th anniversary of its move from Branksome, near Bournemouth, where it began life, to Fordingbridge.

Ernest was born in Stoke-on-Trent, in the heart of pottery country, where both his parents were involved in the industry.

He started his career in Stoke but moved south to Poole Pottery in 1937, where he stayed for the duration of the war, the business of producing utility ware deemed essential work.

But pottery was not where his heart lay, according to Elaine.

"He thought that pottery was horrible and chipped easily.

"Bone china was lovely but spent more time in the cupboard than it did in the oven or on the table."

His solution was to invent a new high fired porcelain recipe using a combination of china clay from Cornwall, feldspar from Norway and silica sand from Scotland, plus a few extras.

The combination is a closely guarded family secret, unknown even to Elaine.

"Even if you juggled with the amounts, you wouldn't get it right," she says with certainty."

The china is so translucent that you can see the silhouette of your hand through the base of a cup held up to the light but, despite its delicate appearance, it is remarkably tough.

To demonstrate, Elaine clangs two cups together noisily and shows me that both are unscathed by the battering.

"We don't make unbreakable china but we make hardwearing china that can go into a microwave, Aga, dishwasher, grill and oven," she says.

What is more, everything they make today is produced to exactly the same designs that Ernest laid down 60 years ago when he left Poole Pottery on the day peace broke out and set up his own business.

Moulds, masters and patterns pricked on to 'pounces' are carefully preserved to ensure continuity, so that the handpainted china can be reproduced exactly.

If you break a 40-year-old teapot lid, you can still get it replaced with the identical item today.

But while the appliance of science informs the manufacturing process, other elements of production are more mundane.

"Greaseproof from the Co-op," explains Elaine, when I ask if special paper is used for the pounces.

Ernest's refusal to bow to the demands of big business led to the move to Fordingbridge - a converted cinema - in Shaftesbury Street, in 1966.

By then, Branksome China was supplying shops such as Harrods and shipping to Saks Fifth Avenue, in New York, but some bigger stores were demanding design changes.

Ernest opted instead to downsize, dropping staff numbers to just six, moving the whole operation closer to his home in Breamore and selling directly from the factory shop or by mail order.

He died in 1987 at the age of 83, but his legacy is a thriving family business, with daughter Priscilla Thomas and daughter-in-law Jo Baggaley very much involved in its day-to-day running.

Even granddaughter Gemma Thomas works there part-time.

Priscilla is one of the small number of artists who hand-paint each piece and whose first name will appear on the base of each piece she paints.

The family are supported by a small but loyal workforce, who have clocked up decades of service between them.

It took Elaine 40 years, she says, to persuade her husband to allow visitors into the factory to see how the china was made.

"He didn't realise how interested people would be," she shrugs.

Now you can book a factory tour on any weekday - and it's well worth it, if only to find out how they make the teapot spouts.

Branksome China is enjoying something of a revival as its two-tone pastel porcelain tableware features in glossy coffee table magazines.

The porcelain itself is wafer-thin, delicate and surprisingly smooth.

"Do you know what my husband told me?" asks Elaine.

"He said: "When I invented it, I was thinking of satin undies."

She grins, then says, "Don't you dare write that."

And do you know, I very nearly didn't.

Branksome China is at 35 Shaftesbury Street, Fordingbridge, and is open Mondays to Saturdays 9.30am to 4.30pm. Tours can be booked by calling 01425 652010. Visit the website at www.brank

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