“I feel like it’s like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’” said Christopher Bailey of the Burleigh Pottery plant in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.
In June, Bailey, the former designer and chief executive officer of Burberry, revealed he had teamed with a small group of investors to buy Burleigh Pottery, the British ceramics house founded in 1851 and known for its highly detailed and handmade designs and collaborations with brands including Ralph Lauren, Soho House and Daylesford.
During an on-stage conversation with WWD’s London bureau chief Samantha Conti at WWD’s 2026 Apparel and Retail CEO Summit, Bailey said the decision to invest in Burleigh was “completely intuitive, instinctive and kind of non-pragmatic.”
After exiting Burberry at the end of 2018 following a 17-year tenure with the luxury brand, and taking some time off to follow his “ultimate dream to just be a dad,” a “quite persistent” investor friend suggested he acquire Denby Pottery, which previously owned Burleigh and went into administration in March. While admitting his “love of pottery,” Bailey declined that opportunity but revealed his interest in Burleigh.
He had to act fast. “I drove up to Staffordshire, where Burleigh is based, and I literally fell in love. It was one of those things where there was no kind of opportunity to be too rational or to think too deeply about it, because I had to make a decision then.”
Four hours later, the deal was done. Bailey was drawn by “its authenticity,” and Burleigh “was almost stuck in aspic, this beautiful thing, 175 years old, but it just hadn’t really evolved. It had preserved all the skills that its founding partners had created, and so it was literally something from the heart,” Bailey enthused.
On stage, he described the special techniques employed to create the pieces, each unique. “A very intricate pattern is hand-drawn onto paper, then that pattern is transferred, engraved onto a copper cylinder that is put onto this machine, heated up slightly, and tissue, literally tissue paper, goes through with a particular ink.”
The tissue paper is then cut out and placed by hand on every product, “which is very difficult because it’s a three-dimensional object that you’re trying to wrap with this piece of tissue paper. So the skill is off the charts and it takes a very, very long time to learn how how to do it,” Bailey explained, adding that the latest cylinder took two years to be made. “We’re evolving that, but yes, two years,” he said smiling.
Bailey mused that he found this all “really seductive in a world where everything is very fast and there’s very little intuition, and [Burleigh] is all about intuition. It’s all about how you put it on once and if it’s wrong, the pot has to be thrown away.”
The pottery is created on “human instinct, and it just resonated because I love technology and [how it] allows us to kind of move fast and perform a lot of functions that we just couldn’t do by ourselves, and all the different opportunities that it offers. But it’s funny, the thing that kind of made my heart sing was this AI-proof kind of technique.”
Bailey likened this to his experience in fashion. “It is couture because there are no two pieces ever the same.”
Asked about his ambitions for Burleigh, Bailey admitted he is still “learning and trying to understand. I want to be incredibly respectful of something that I don’t know anything about,” but “the fundamental role” is to preserve the uniqueness of the company, “to make sure that this technique, this way of making, this skill is protected.” To this end, he said he “would love to start a Burleigh guild, to bring young people into that skill,” yet at the same time “build a really strong operational kind of machine that is automated. We’re running the business on something that is efficient, but the product is slow.”
According to Bailey, Burleigh “has never seen itself as a brand or having its own point of view. It is almost a manufacturer,” and, given the changes in the world, he believes it is time “to create the voice, the personality and the character” of Burleigh through different platforms, digital and physical “to be able to try to articulate our story and to make sure that people understand where things come from, the personality of things. How do they fit within my world and my life? With ceramics, it’s an incredibly intimate kind of product because we live with it every single day, we bring it to our lips. It touches our body when we drink from our favorite cup each morning.”
In that way, he found many similarities with Burberry, as people told him they had grown up with Calico or with Asiatic Pheasants, two of Burleigh’s storied patterns.
Since Burleigh was in administration as late as June, Bailey said the efforts made to revive the brand are “a labor of love,” and that given the very small budgets — “basically a ham sandwich and a packet of crisps” — he has relied on “the kindness of friends,” including photographer Chris Rhodes for the new website unveiled in October.
“I consider us as a 175-year-old start-up because we have no systems. We’re all on paper. We are a Victorian company, so we have much to do. I’ve had to basically just become incredibly humble and incredibly good and quite brave because it’s out of character for me to call and say, ‘Is there any way you can help me build this, make this, do this?’ I’m working with brilliant, creative people, creative thinkers that I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with for many years in other lives to try and make this very important British brand flourish again.”
Understanding the history of Burleigh helped Bailey transition from an expansive fashion company with big budgets like Burberry. “I often think of a brand just as a person. It has a character and a personality, and you’ve got to understand where it comes from to know where it can go.”
He said he is “a firm believer that there is an end to some brands, some companies,” and that “they’ve had an amazing moment, but there is no more road left for them.” This was not so for Burberry and equally for Burleigh — as he joked that he only works with companies that start with the syllables B-u-r “to make it really easy.”
He cited Burberry’s trenchcoats that continue to be made in Castleford, West Yorkshire, and at Burleigh “today we still have the same Victorian cogs, one machine that has been there since 1868 and never stopped, that we oil every day, and basically, it’s to make sure the liquid clay that is underground to move, because otherwise, it turns solid.”
Bailey is working on distribution and evolving Burleigh’s operating model into a make-to-order one. “We sit in the most unbelievable kind of stores around the world and the most unbelievable hospitality and Michelin[-starred] restaurants. It’s a very, very high-end, elegant, sophisticated product that can be used every day, because when our founders created it, they didn’t know this, but they made it dishwasher-proof.”
He underscored, however, the importance of not rushing any decision, since each requires investments, so that the business needs to be built “in a very methodical, very thoughtful way.”
Bailey is embracing his new life, a “completely different life, and I’m loving it. At Burberry, I had this great privilege of leading many teams, and there was a lot of infrastructure around me. And now I’m moving boxes. I’m making everyone coffee. I’m starting from the beginning. It’s really, really hard work. Burberry was intensely hard work. This is intensely hard work, but I’m loving rolling up my sleeves, learning something new.”
He also feels that this new professional life is an example for his two daughters after always telling them that “it doesn’t matter what you do in life. Follow your heart. Find the thing that you love doing, and hopefully one day somebody might pay you for it. But stick with it. And I felt that I was kind of trying to kind of explain that and give that as the value of our family.…I’ve always been a hard worker, but my kids have never really seen me working in that way professionally, in a very humble way and right at the bottom, and I’m trying to learn a new skill whilst using my experience from my my past lives.”
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