page_title: Clarice Cliff
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Clarice Cliff / Early career
caption_attribution_description: Printed backstamp from 1928, then used on 'Bizarre' ware in various styles until early 1936
context_page_description: Clarice Cliff was an English ceramic artist active from 1922 to 1963. She became a ceramic artist, becoming the head of the factory artistic department.
context_section_description: In 1916,Cliff made the unusual decision to move to the factory of A.J. Wilkinson at Newport, Burslem, to improve her career opportunities. Most young women in the Staffordshire Potteries were on 'apprentice wages', and having mastered a particular task, stayed with that to maximise their income. 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 the decorating manager Jack Walker brought Cliff to the attention of one of factory owners, Arthur Colley Austin Shorter, who managed the company with his brother Guy. Colley Shorter was 17 years older than Cliff. He nurtured her skills and ideas. He was married but was later to be her husband. Cliff was given special attention by her lover and she journeyed to the Royal College of Art and to Paris.
  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.
  She covered the imperfections in simple patterns of triangles, in a style that she called 'Bizarre'. The earliest examples had just a hand-painted mark, usually in a rust coloured paint, 'Bizarre by Clarice Cliff', sometimes with 'Newport Pottery' underneath. To the surprise of the company's senior salesman Ewart Oakes, when he took a car load to a major stockist, it was immediately popular. Clarice was joined by young painter Gladys Scarlett, who helped her with the ware, and soon a more professional 'backstamp' was made, which carried Cliff's facsimile signature, and proclaimed "Hand painted Bizarre by Clarice Cliff, Newport Pottery England".
  This backstamp was in fact to lead to Bizarre being used as an umbrella name for her entire pattern range, so that the factory then had to refer to the first pieces in the simple triangles as Original Bizarre.
  In March 1927 Colley Shorter (who acted very independently of his brother, Guy), sent Cliff to the Royal College of Art in Kensington, London for two brief periods of study in March and May. These dates are recorded in the Royal College of Art archive and were also remembered by Gladys Scarlett (in 1982 ) as she was briefly left alone at Newport to paint the new 'Bizarre' ware.
  From 1927 Cliff was actually credited for shapes she designed, such as her Viking Boat flower holder, though her modelling for the factory is recorded in trade journal as far back as 1923–24. The shapes from 1929 onwards took on a more 'Moderne' influence, often angular and geometric, and some are what was to be later termed Art Deco.  Abstract and cubist patterns appeared on these shapes, such as the 1929 Ravel (seen on Cliff's Conical shape ware) which was an abstract leaf and flower pattern named after the composer. The image shows a Conical coffee pot, and sugar bowl and cream with four triangular feet, another of Cliff's rather Bizarre shape ideas which proved popular with 1930s customers. Ravel was to be produced between 1929 and at least as late as 1935.
  In 1928 Clarice produced a simple, hand painted pattern of Crocus flowers in orange, blue and purple, each flower being constructed with confident upward strokes. Then green leaves were added by holding the piece upside down and painting thin lines amongst the flowers. Being made from the individual brushstrokes, the Crocus pattern was clearly completely hand-painted, and the vibrant colours instantly attracted lar
caption: The first printed 'Bizarre' backstamp used on Clarice Cliff ware from 1928 to early 1936 in various styles.
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