Clarice Cliff was to art pottery what Isadora Duncan was to modern dance. She had a vision and followed it, oblivious to convention or criticism. Cliff’s hand-painted Jazz-Age pottery is immediately identifiable for its diametrically opposed colors and wildly geometric shapes. During the late 1920s and early to mid-1930s, the defining period of creativity for Cliff, the English designer’s work was viewed by the mainstream consumer as “bizarre” – a description she would embrace by naming her controversial range of wares “Bizarre,” and her team of painters the “Bizarre Girls.”
Cliff’s nonconformist shapes and pre-dayglo colors first earned acclaim and acceptance within Britain’s artsy crowd, but Buckingham Palace took its time in warming up to them. Queen Mary reportedly called Cliff’s designs “Ghastly!” But in time, Her Majesty joined legions of other Brits, acquiring a tea set and several other pieces of Clarice Cliff pottery, although in tamer patterns.
The inspiration for Cliff’s now-coveted Cubist designs would come from Continental Europe, but not before she spent many years paying her dues at earthenware factories in England’s Midlands region. Cliff was born in 1899 to a working-class family in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, the heart of Britain’s pottery belt. Like many others of her station in life, she dropped out of school at age 13 to enter the workforce and help with the family finances. In 1912, she took an entry-level position at Lingard, Webster & Co. in Tunstall, earning one shilling per week. It was there, as an enameling apprentice, that Cliff learned how to draw freehand onto blank pottery, the first step toward becoming a designer.
After a few quick career jumps in the three years that followed, Cliff landed at A. J. Wilkinson’s earthenware factory in Middleport. When an opening was announced in the decorating department, Cliff quickly applied for, and secured, the desired position. She proved to be a quick study, and during her breaks from work, would walk around the factory to observe the goings-on in other departments, thus learning the process of pottery production from start to finish.
Cliff’s enthusiasm and talent were not lost on Wilkinson’s directors, brothers Colley and Guy Shorter, or the company’s decorating manager, Jack Walker, but it was not until 1920 that Clarice was given the opportunity she had dreamed of – a chance to create her own designs. She was moved into the private studio that served as the think tank for Wilkinson’s top designers, Fred Ridgeway and John Butler. Given that freedom, Cliff’s abilities blossomed.
In 1927, encouraged by Colley Shorter and sponsored by Wilkinson’s, Cliff enrolled in a two-month course at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London. There, she learned clay modeling and earned the hard-won praise of her instructors. Perhaps the most fateful turn in Cliff’s life came later that same year, when Colley Shorter financed her trip to Paris. A city brimming with innovation in the aftermath of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, Paris enchanted Cliff. She visited galleries and voraciously studied the work of other designers, noting everything she saw in her sketchbook.
Upon her return to England and Wilkinson’s Pottery, Cliff approached her boss with an idea. Since Wilkinson’s had just bought the rival Newport Pottery, whose inventory included a large supply of blank wares, she proposed the establishment of a separate studio where she could apply her own experimental designs to the blanks. Her request was granted, and her subsequent work so impressed Shorter, he hired a team of apprentices to assist Cliff. The young women would become the core of Clarice’s Bizarre Girls.
Some of the pieces painted during that early period were marketed with Newport backstamps, but in July of 1928, the design team began to write the word Bizarre on the base of each item they decorated. Although the pattern known as Original Bizarre is an abstract, Cliff’s first commercial success was achieved with the far more mundane Crocus. France and its neighboring nations had adopted the streamlined principles of the German Bauhaus School, but Britain had been slower to update its traditional – some say “stuffier” – style of interior design. Cliff was shrewd enough to know the British public would not accept a design concept before its time had come, and catered to the consumer’s taste with her innocuous Crocus motif. As it turns out, her instincts served her well. It is said that in 1928, no newlywed British couple’s home was complete without a dinner set in the Crocus pattern, which, at the time, cost five guineas (less than $5).
It was Cliff’s fearlessness and disregard for the norm that unwittingly produced the designs now most desirable to today’s collectors, but everything she created was for practical use, from salt-and-peppers and tea sets to vases and bookends. Clarice Cliff is all about pattern and shape, and these two factors, alone, are what dictate the prices in a now-mature market. The rule: a geometric pattern like Cubist or Tennis can make up for a unexciting traditional shape; and, conversely, an abstract shape, such as the angular Biarritz, can offset a ho-hum floral motif. Find a piece that combines a coveted pattern with an offbeat shape and you’ve hit the jackpot.
The collecting train left the station in the mid-1980s, when Christie’s South Kensington began holding its dedicated sales of Clarice Cliff pottery. Prices rose steadily into the 1990s and, when a wave of new interest from America entered the fray, it was hold onto your hats forever more. Even celebrities jumped onto the Cliff-collecting bandwagon. Whoopi Goldberg began buying, as did Broadway and film star Joe Mantegna, and actress Peggy Lipton, famous for her role as Julie in the 1960s TV series Mod Squad. A large collection of splashy Cliffware punctuates the all-white décor of Lipton’s home in the posh L.A. neighborhood of Bel Air. And prices certainly weren’t hurt by the apocryphal story of an Australian who amassed a sizable quantity of Clarice Cliff pottery while living in London 25 or 30 years ago and later swapped it outright for a house in Sydney. That was enough to fuel a runaway collecting frenzy.
Most collectors buy Cliffware to own and enjoy, but if resale is a consideration, purchases should still be made with aesthetics squarely in mind. Name, alone, does not constitute value in this collecting realm. After World War II, a line of dinnerware called Tonquin was manufactured with Clarice Cliff’s name on the backstamp. By that time, Cliff had little involvement with ceramics. She had married Colley Shorter in 1940, retired from pottery designing and preferred to spend her days gardening. While the Tonquin range bears her name, it reflects none of her trademark style. It’s only average from an aesthetic point of view, and you’ll see plenty of it going unsold on eBay.
When prices on larger pieces, such as single- and double-handled “Lotus” jugs, began soaring beyond belief in the mid-1990s, collectors with more taste than money began seeking out then-affordable conical sugar sifters (shakers) to display en masse. But auction prices caught up quickly, with an example in the May Avenue pattern achieving almost $10,000 in Christie’s November 1998 Cliff sale. Now, “conicals” in even the most common patterns easily can set you back $1,000 or more, with better patterns selling in the multiple thousands. Entry level for Clarice Cliff pottery – $300-$500 – lies in knickknacks and incidentals: small plates, single candlesticks, jam pots in minor patterns or single salt or pepper shakers in traditional shapes.
And what about eBay? It’s an excellent place to search daily, but be aware that it’s no bargain-hunter’s paradise, just an online reflection of the bricks-and-mortar marketplace. Frilly patterns don’t bring remarkable prices on eBay, but geometric rarities will barrel right through their reserves. Caution: Whether buying online or in person, make sure you are dealing with a reputable party who will stand behind their merchandise. Fakes, while immediately identifiable as such to the practiced eye, have been produced in Italy. Also, many pieces of Clarice Cliff pottery have been damaged and later repaired. Ask if the item you are considering has been blacklighted and shown to be free of repairs. This is not to say a repaired piece should not be purchased; just make sure the damage is factored into the price you pay.
Clarice Cliff pottery was never exported to the United States; it was sold almost exclusively in British Commonwealth countries. Accordingly, the last frontier for fresh to the market Cliffware is in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – but the cat is out of the bag in terms of value. If you want a great piece in a rare pattern, expect to pay.
The most effective way to monitor current market values and learn about patterns, shapes and backstamps is to use LiveAuctioneers.com’s search function (www.liveauctioneers.com). This feature, for which one would otherwise expect to pay hundreds of dollars per year, is free of charge and allows the user to search for the name Clarice Cliff in the “live” and archived catalogs of 650 leading auction houses. It’s an indispensable tool for locating available Clarice Cliff designs and gauging current market values. Another recommendation would be to subscribe to Christie’s South Kensington’s semiannual Clarice Cliff auction catalogs (www.christies.com).
When you enter the Clarice Cliff collecting arena, you face daunting competition, but the upside is that this is one collecting category whose prices show no signs of turning around. Wall Street may flounder, and the world economy may dip, but Clarice Cliff pottery answers only to its fans, and they just keep on coming.
