It is amazing what you find when you are not looking for it.

My husband Nigel is a Stoke boy, born and brought up in Tunstall. The city was once the centre of working class creativity in the UK, a place where men and women created things of great beauty from the clay beneath their feet. Today, it is one of the poorest cities in our country.

But evidence of Stoke’s great days are everywhere and yesterday we found a little piece of it in the streets of Philadelphia.

A little piece of Stoke in Philly

Nigel’s mother, Irene, worked as a young women in the small pottery of Hollinshead and Kirkham. It is not nearly as famous as Moorhead or Wedgewood, but the pieces created by artists such as R Groscott are beautiful and Clarice Cliff learned her trade there.

So we are delighted to stumble across this little dish in Mae Downs & Co, a tiny vintage shop in Pine Row.

It will never make us a fortune on the Antiques Roadshow, but it will make us smile every time we look at it.