Clarice Cliff: star pottery in mid C20th

Fruit fanastique, 1929

Clarice Cliff (1899–1972) was born to Harry and Ann Cliff in Stoke-on-Trent, one of 7 children. From 13 she worked in The Potteries, her ta­lent first noted in 1916 when she joined Arthur Wilk­in­son, a maker of transfer-printed earthenwares. She made her name with the brightly co­loured range of Art Deco pottery she designed in the 1920s. Her Deco era objects, with bold floral, abstract patterns and angular shapes, incl­uded conical sugar sifters, Stamford-shaped tea­pots and YoYo vas­es.

Red trees and houses, 1931

She trained at art school and was eventually given her own studio and a team of 25+ paint­ress­es, the Bizarre Girls, to work on her on more experimental wares. After the hand-painted Bizarre mark, the first stam­ped mark (1927) was the classic Hand Pain­t­ed Bizarre by Clarice Cliff New­port Pottery. Clarice’s 1930s abstract designs like Football and Tennis were insp­ired by then avant-garde Cubism or De Stijl move­ments she saw at the Royal College of Art and on trips to Par­is. A Tennis pattern Meiping vase fetched £8000 at Dreweatts recently.

In 1928 Clarice created Crocus flowers made from indiv­idual brush­st­rokes, totally hand-painted in bright colours. Orders came in quickly and in 1930 a separate décor­ating section was set up to meet dem­and. The Crocus designs were produced in large volumes, often for regular domestic use, and popular with collectors.

Between 1932-4 Cliff was the art director for a major project involv­ing c30 artists to promote good tableware design. The Artists in Ind­us­try earthen wares were produced under her direction; the famous art­ists inc­luded Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Bar­b­ara Hepworth and Vanessa Bell. The proj­ect Modern Art for the Table was launched at Harrods in Oct 1934 to a mixed response. The most successful was the Circus tab­le­ware range designed by Dame Laura Knight in a clear linear style.

Buyers were predominantly from British countries where Cl­iff was exp­orted in the inter-War years. Bizarre and Fantasque-ware was sold in North America, Australia, N.Z, South Africa, but not in Europe.

Clarice married her boss Colley Shorter in 1940 and moved to Chetwynd House and gar­dens. After Shorter died in 1963, Cl­arice sold the fact­ory to Midwint­er's and retired to Chetwynd. Mid­winter was by then the fash­ionable producer of modern tableware.

Brighton Mus­eum held the first Clarice Cliff Ret­rospect­ive Exhib­ition in 1972, where she wrote catal­og­ue notes and donated her own ob­jects. Alas she died at Chet­wynd House in Oct 1972.  Brighton Museum sign­al­led a major revival of interest in Clarice Cliff pottery. 

Four years later there was anot­her key ex­hibition held at London’s L'Odeon Gallery where the book Clarice Cliff was pu­b­lished by Wentworth-Sheilds and John­son. In 1977 col­lector Leonard Grif­fin first saw her pottery at a local Notts Antiques Fair, prompt­ing his research in Staffordshire’s Potteries. Th­e Potteries’ records about the sh­apes and designs Clarice produc­ed prom­pt­ing him to found the Cl­arice Cliff Collectors Club/CCCC in 1982 with just 34 members, publishing regular rev­iews and discovering a wide range of abst­r­act, geometric, landscape and floral designs.

Odilon jug, Bizarre ware Picasso Flower pattern 

BanfordsAuctions

In Jun 1983 Christie’s London held their first Bizarre Pot­t­ery by Clarice Cliff. In the 1980s more collectors joined the CCCC which served both keen coll­ec­tors and ac­ad­emics. By 1988 Griffin had amassed so much in­form­ation that with American coll­ec­t­ors Louis & Susan Meisel, he pro­d­uced a lar­ge and well illustrated book, called Clarice Cliff: The Biz­arre Affair. This had a profound ef­fect on Clarice Cliff coll­ect­ing, CCCC conv­ent­ions and exhibitions.

In 1995 Leonard Griffin wrote The Rich Designs of Clarice Cliff and then a book on teapots called Taking Tea with Clarice Cliff (1996). This attracted many new fans to Clarice’s Bizarre pottery, selling two hardback edit­ions. The demand for yet another Cliff book was so great he wrote The Fantastic Flowers of Clarice Cliff in 1998.

By this time Wedgwood owned the Cliff name, and for her 1999 centenary year, they planned an exhibition. Grif­fin was the official con­sultant, and it was through the CCCC mem­bers’ generosity that 600+ pieces were assembled at Bar­l­aston Wedgwood Museum Stoke-on-Trent. His cent­enary year­book Clar­ice Cliff: The Art of Bizarre was published.

In 2012 leading Clarice Cliff dealer And­rew Muir in Birm­ingham, along with Fieldings Auctioneers cons­ultant Will Farmer became the new own­ers of the CCCClub. They planned a new int­ernet site ClariceCliff.com, producing the world’s largest on-line museum of Cliff’s ceramics art.

A table centrepiece modelled as two pairs of dancers, one of Clarice Cliff’s Age of Jazz figures, sold for £15,000 at Woolley & Wallis in March 2018. There are five figures from this 1930 series that evoked the French ceramicist Robert Lallement and a series of jazz musician figures.

In the 1930s Appliqué range, there were pat­terns eg Sunspots from which few ex­am­ples have been located. And shapes were as im­portant as patt­erns eg see the distinctive conical form of sugar sifters. Rare and in sup­erb condition, it recently sold for £8000 at Fieldings. A c1931 Appliqué plaque was painted with a stylised bird of paradise. Very rare and in superb condition, an App­liqué plaque c1931 sold for £8000 at Fieldings in Oct 2017. And a wall plaque from the Fantasque range, with Trees and House, sold for £2400 at Fieldings.

Clarice prices peaked at 1995 and then fell. Some of the more pedest­rian relief-moulded wares such as Celtic Har­vest can be bought cheap­ly. But rarer combinations of shape and pattern fetch high prices at auction. Condition always had a bearing on value, since Cliff's ov­er­glaze hand-painted décor­at­ion tended to flaest peaked in 1980s-90s, there were regular sp­ecialist auct­ions at Christie’s South Kensington and some specialist antiques fair dealers. In 2003 South Kensington sold a rare charger with the lo­v­ed May Avenue pattern for £34,000, Cliff’s auction record still. The May Avenue pattern had many of the features that Cliff collectors seek, bold designs and semi abstraction.

May Avenue patterned tea set, 1933

The 2007 sales at Christie's was the last specialist Cliff auction and London now sells Clarice Cliff in mixed decorative pottery. How­ev­er sp­ecialist sal­es were revived by Stourbridge firm Field­ings, with the CCCClub. A Fantasque wall plaque in the Trees and House pattern sold for £2400 at Fieldings in Oct 2017. Rare obj­ects like the Age of Jazz flat-back figurines or a vase shaped as the prow of a liner (1931) fet­ched heaps. Lotus jugs had a great shape and the 1930 Lucerne patt­ern was a pop­ular design in this colourful Appliqué range, ma­king £7200 at Martel Maides in Sept 2011. A different lotus vase decorated in the Blue Lucerne patt­ern sold for £3400 at Maxwells of Wilmslow in Jan 2016.  

vase shaped as prow of a liner, 1931

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