Fruit fanastique, 1929
Red trees and houses, 1931
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
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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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