Clarice Cliff

Clarice Cliff (20 January 1899 – 23 October 1972) was an English ceramic artist active from 1922 to 1963. She began as an apprentice potter. By reason of her talent and ability, she became a ceramic artist, becoming the head of the factory artistic department.

The Cliff family moved to Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, from the Eccleshall area in about 1725. Cliff was born in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, England. When Clarice was born their home was on Meir Ptreet on a terrace of modest houses. Cliff's father Harry worked at the local iron foundry in Tunstall, her mother Ann took in washing to supplement the family income, and they had seven children.

Cliff was sent to a different school from her siblings, and this perhaps prompted her more independent approach to her career, and her non-standard life style by Stoke-on-Trent standards. After school Cliff would visit aunts who were hand painters at a local pottery company, and she also made models from papier-mâché at school.

At the age of 13, Cliff started working in the pottery industry. Her first work was as a gilder, adding gold lines on ware of traditional design. Once she had mastered this she changed jobs to learn freehand painting at another potbank, at the same time studying art and sculpture at the Burslem School of Art in the evenings.

In 1916,Cliff made the rather unusual decision to move to the factory of A.J. Wilkinson at Newport, Burslem, to improve her career opportunities. This necessitated a lengthy journey to work. This was an unusual start to an unusual career; most young women in the Staffordshire Potteries were on 'apprentice wages', and having mastered a particular task, stayed with that to maximise their income. However, Cliff was ambitious and acquired skills in modelling figurines and vases, gilding, keeping pattern books and hand painting ware: outlining, enamelling (filling in colours within the outline) and banding (the radial bands on plates or vessels). In the early 1920s her immediate boss Jack Walker brought Cliff to the attention of one of the two factory owners, Colley Shorter, who managed it with his brother Guy. Colley Shorter was 17 years older than Cliff, and as well as playing a major role in nurturing her skills and ideas, he was later to be her husband.

Cliff was given a second apprenticeship at A. J. Wilkinson's in 1924 (when she was already 25 years old) primarily as a 'modeller' but she also worked with the factory designers John Butler and Fred Ridgway. They produced conservative, Victorian style ware – Butler had been the designer for over 20 years by this time. Eventually, Cliff's wide range of skills were recognised and in 1927 she was given her own studio at the adjoining Newport Pottery which Shorter had bought in 1920. Here Cliff was allowed to decorate some of the old defective 'glost' (white) ware in her own freehand patterns. For these she used on-glaze enamel colours, which enabled a brighter palette than underglaze colours.

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