The Staffordshire born and bred designer Clarice Cliff made her
name with the brightly coloured range of Art Deco pottery she
designed in the 1920s. Her talent was first spotted in 1916 when
she joined Arthur J. Wilkinson, a Burslem maker of standard
transfer-printed earthenwares.
She trained at art school and was eventually given her own
studio and a team of paintresses to work with her on more
experimental wares.
Based at the Newport Pottery warehouse, the team first used old
Newport blanks which they covered in the brightly coloured and
distinctive designs that were launched in 1927 as the Bizarre
range. The associated Fantasque range evolved between
1928 and 1934 and mainly featured abstracts or landscapes of
cottages and trees.
Bizarre pottery was a breath of fresh air when it arrived on the
scene. Redolent of Art Deco and the Jazz Age, it was hugely popular
when it was made, although contrary to some misconceptions, it was
not that cheap at the time. It put Wilkinson's on the map and made
the company's and Clarice's fortune (quite literally as she married
the boss, Colley Shorter, in 1940).
Although pieces carrying the Clarice Cliff name were still being
made into the early 1960s, the production of Bizarre pottery proper
covered a relatively short inter-War period. Production began in
1927 and had largely ceased by 1942 when the Newport pottery closed
and the remaining Clarice Cliff team moved back to Wilkinson's.
Colley Shorter died in 1963 and the following year Clarice sold
the Wilkinson's factory to Midwinter which was by then the
fashionable producer of tableware for modern tastes.
One reason why Clarice Cliff pottery has been so attractive to
collectors is that there is enough of it around to make it
available to a large collecting base but not so much as to render
it ubiquitous.
And as some ranges and patterns were produced in much smaller
quantities than others, that lends the ceramics a definite price
structure. Buyers are predominantly British or from the
Commonwealth countries where Clarice Cliff was exported in the
inter-War years (Bizarre and Fantasqueware was sold
throughout North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, but
not in mainland Europe). There are still collectors with strong
collecting pockets in Australia and Canada.
Shapes and patterns dictate the collecting hierarchy. Scarcity
is a key factor. The floral designs, such as Autumn Crocus pattern,
were produced in large volumes, often for regular domestic use, so
while popular with collectors, these are relatively
inexpensive.
At the other end of the spectrum are patterns from the
short-lived Appliqué range, made 1930-31, which required many more
man hours to decorate. There are patterns such as Sunspots for
which only around 20 examples have been located, while wares in
unrecorded experimental patterns continue to be discovered.
Above: shapes are as
important as patterns when it comes to Clarice Cliff. The
distinctive conical form of her sugar sifters for example makes
them highly collectable. This example, which sold for £650 at
Woolley and Wallis in April 2010, also had the bonus of a rare
Killarney pattern.
Broadly speaking, buyers want their Clarice Cliff wares to evoke
the Deco era, so alongside bold floral and abstract patterns, they
covet equally bold angular shapes. Conical sugar sifters,
Stamford-shaped teapots and YoYo vases command a premium way above
pieces in the same pattern but of more traditional form. Some
patterns were applied to multiple shapes: Bonjour had 20
shapes created during 1933, with about 10 more being added in
1934.
Rarities such as the Age of Jazz flat-back figurines, the
geometric face mask designed by Ron Birks, the Lido
Lady ashtray or a vase shaped as the prow of a liner (an
example of which sold for in 2001 at Bonhams for £13,000) are at
the very top of the price pile.
Founded in 1982 and still going strong, the Clarice Cliff
Collectors' Club is a premier source of information about the
designer, her work and patterns, shapes and values.
It was an exhibition held at the Brighton Museum in 1972 that
signalled the first major revival of interest in Clarice Cliff's
pottery. Four years later there was another seminal exhibition held
at the London gallery L'Odeon. A growing wave of interest followed
and, with the onset of the 1980s, these stylish table and
ornamental wares generated much of the excitement they had in the
1920s.
Numerous books ensued, the collectors' club was founded in 1982
by collector/author Leonard Griffin and there was a memorable
documentary about the Bizarre Girls, Clarice's team of paintresses
(fortunately enough the 'girls' were still alive to make for some
first-hand interviews).
The collecting market for Clarice Cliff pottery is complex. It
is still possible to find examples of Crocus, Cliff's longest
produced pattern (1928-1964) and some of the more pedestrian
relief-moulded wares such as Celtic Harvest for as little as
£20-50. But rare combinations of shape and pattern attract very
high prices at auction.
Condition will always have a bearing on value, especially as
Clarice Cliff's overglaze hand-painted decoration is particularly
prone to paint flaking.
At the peak of interest in the 1980s and '90s, there were
regular specialist auctions at Christie's South Kensington and a
number of specialist dealers whose stands at antiques fairs were
devoted to Clarice. In 2003 Christie's sold a rare charger with the
striking and much sought-afterMay Avenuepattern for £34,000, a
price that is still the auction record for Clarice Cliff. It is
perhaps telling that another version has since sold for
£20,500.
Clarice prices probably peaked around the turn of the century
and have since fallen. In 2007 the sales at Christie's, an annual
focus for the collecting community, ceased and London sales now
tend to feature Clarice Cliff sections in broader mixes of
decorative pottery or design. Specialist sales have now been
revived by Stourbridge firm Fieldings in association with the
Clarice Cliff Collectors' Club.
Rare pieces are still expensive but prices are dramatically down
on their zenith. There have been some interesting tests of the
market in recent years, particularly the sale of the Sevi Guatelli
collection (at Bonhams in March 2009 and subsequently at Woolley
& Wallis in Salisbury and Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh)
which offered top range, blue chip scarcities bought at the height
of the market.
Clarice Cliff
(Shire Library) by Will
Farmer. ISBN-10: 0747807744
Clarice Cliff: The Bizarre
Affair by Leonard
Griffin. ISBN-10: 0500275025
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