Click 'Order Now!!' button to place an order.

‘One of the romances of the pottery trade has been that of Miss Clarice Cliff who a short time back was a modeller for a pottery firm in Stoke, before she conceived the idea of brighter pottery for the home. Now she spends her days designing gay, many coloured fantasies, that are painted on ordinary cream pottery by over 100 girls, paintresses as they are called locally, who quickly learn her designs by heart.’  Daily Mirror, June 1930

Clarice Cliff’s astounding emergence as the premier ceramic designer in the Staffordshire Potteries in the thirties, is a story as fantastic as her pottery. Daring enough to create ware in unique and diverse styles, Clarice's prolific output between 1927 and 1939, left a trail of pieces all around the world. Today, these entice, intrigue, bewitch and mystify collectors. When this Bizarre treasure trail was first re-discovered in the sixties, delighted collectors rose to the challenge of trying to assemble the seemingly endless variety of pieces. Since then, the legendary high prices, tales of unique pieces being bought for just a few pounds, and the intriguing true stories behind the pottery, have made Clarice Cliff a charismatic icon of the thirties.

After the first retrospective of her work at Brighton Museum in 1972, Clarice's reputation continued to grow as more and more of her work came to light. In the last ten years much new information has appeared which means we need to re-evaluate her work, and its importance for Twentieth Century ceramics. Whilst Clarice Cliff : the Art of Bizarre seeks to answer many factual questions, it also asks that the reader use their imagination. Stories of events that happened seventy years ago, recalled by Clarice's friends and colleagues, are inevitably sometimes cloudy. Using a little artistic licence I have recounted some of them as fiction, but they are based on fact. I think most Clarice Cliff devotees, even in their wildest imagination , will be surprised by the story of Clarice and Colley and the evening she had the idea for her Age of Jazz figures! The tale is true, as it was related to the son of the woman who discovered them at the Café de Paris ! However, to bring to life just another everyday event in the life of Clarice and Colley I have given it dialogue and used a little imagination - something Clarice Cliff used a lot, and often! This is just one way in which Clarice Cliff : the Art of Bizarre is very different to Bizarre Affair even though it is the official follow-up.

It was Clarice's imagination that helped make her the best known ceramic designer of her generation. Yet, only fifteen years ago many people still referred to her as ‘Clarence Cliff’ or ‘Who!’ Her rise to becoming internationally known has been stunning but it is merely a direct repetition of the impact her ware had originally, when as the first woman Art Director in the Potteries, she uniquely controlled both the shapes and patterns of her ceramics.

As well as celebrating the centenary of her birth, the reason I wrote a fifth book on Clarice Cliff is that her output was so complex that I am only now able to document it fully. The earliest, the L’Odeon book in 1976, was written by Peter Wentworth-Sheilds and Kay Johnson and I am delighted to announce that that they have contributed the introduction to the new book. Their pioneering volume fired my interest in 1980 and prompted the research that led to Bizarre Affair. When it was published in 1988, the new information, mixed with Louis and Susan Meisel’s glorious colour feast of Clarice's best pieces, introduced Bizarre to a whole new generation. It also triggered another wave of information as more people who played a part in the Bizarre years contacted me. This response was not just from Britain, but from Australia, New Zealand, North America and South Africa; all the countries where Colley Shorter had so successfully exported Clarice's ware to. Eleven years later, the world is of course a much smaller place, and thanks to Andrew Hutton developing the C.C.C.C. Web site, collectors from those countries are now much more in touch with what goes on in the Clarice Cliff world here in Britain!

In two of my earlier books, Taking Tea and Fantastic Flowers, I covered specific aspects of Clarice's life and work which allows me in The Art of Bizarre to record her unique contribution as both an industrial designer and ceramic artist. Her primary role was that of a designer who focused the skills of over one hundred Bizarre decorators. Clarice's unique Bizarre shop was staffed by eager and skilled young minds and hands, through which she expressed her art on pottery. Nowhere else in the world was there a factory blending studio principles with production line techniques. Clarice's designs utilised a massive range of decorating techniques: on-glaze enamels, the glorious Latona and Inspiration glazes, the wildly splattered Patina and Delecia ranges, and highly modelled My Garden and Scraphito ware. This artistic diversity represented the most comprehensive output of any one designer in the Potteries in the thirties.

Previously I have told Clarice's story chronologically but she was so prolific that the ware she created in her heyday does not lend itself to neat dating. In Clarice Cliff : the Art of Bizarre we cover her output with dedicated chapters, her shapes, her use of colour, the twenty facemasks, a study of tea and coffee ware, and we have an in-depth chapter on Colley Shorter whose role in her success was so important 

Clarice Cliff : the Art of Bizarre also re-dates crucial parts of the Clarice Cliff story. Whereas we believed Bizarre ware was launched in September 1928 I can now show that the true date was a year earlier. Whilst these new dates are important, the book looks at the various expressions of her art, allowing us to follow their development and appreciate her greatest pieces more fully. The Clarice Cliff Collectors Club has fortunately brought me into contact with collectors as enthusiastic as myself and I cannot over-emphasise the importance of their observations. Two, Doreen Jenkins and Dr. Phil Woodward, have to be singled-out. Doreen’s insight helped capture the essence of Clarice the woman. Phil’s astute detective work proved beyond doubt her pre-eminence in the thirties, and finally answered the intriguing question at the root of the Clarice Cliff story - why Bizarre?

Looking at a glorious selection of Clarice's major shapes we can see that she captured a style no one else was to equal. No other Staffordshire designer created such delightfully different shapes: vases, bowls, dozens of tea and coffee shapes, facemasks, smoker's sets, endless fancies, and Art Deco icons such as the Age of Jazz figures and Lido Lady Ashtray.

What has until now been perceived as Clarice's biggest mistake, dropping her Bizarre tradename, was with hindsight probably her best decision. Like other talented creative artists who were largely self-taught, she did not have grandiose ideas about the importance of her own work. She pursued a goal, achieved it, and then saw no point in perpetuating that achievement, so left the talented team she had assembled to fuel the creative fires at her factory. She left us wanting more...

Because Clarice Cliff achieved what she did by rejecting the dictates of the establishment, even today she is regarded as a rebel by some. Hence it is fitting that in her centenary year, Clarice's Bizarre Art is being celebrated not in a dull Victorian museum, but on a green field site at Barlaston where Wedgwood built the most modern ‘potbank’ in Britain in 1939. They inherited Clarice's name when they absorbed the factory where her pottery had been made. It is therefore fitting that the official launch of the book in the world is in Staffordshire at the Wedgwood factory at Barlaston on Sunday May 16th. This is a public event, and we will have some of Clarice's Bizarre ‘girls’ as our special guests. Then we make it Clarice Cliff Week by having the London launch of the book at Christie’s South Kensington on May 18th to the 20th, as part of the preview of their Clarice Cliff sale on May 21st.

It seems strange that now, in Clarice's Centenary year, as well as Wedgwood’s hand-painted reproductions of her work, her art is also readily available for everyone as others have created Clarice Cliff tea towels, mugs, or biscuit tins, with a sound commercial eye Colley Shorter would have admired. Her unique style has made Clarice Cliff an icon of the twentieth century. This still surprises her detractors, as even today her work is avant garde. Yet as early as 1932 an Australian Bizarre stockist commented:

‘There is nothing more typical of this age of simplicity in design than Clarice Cliff’s work, and it is safe to say that early twentieth century design will be inseparably associated in the minds of collectors of the future with the name of Clarice Cliff’.

Clarice's Art made her name one that meant a great deal in the thirties. Having bewitched the world she retired artistically and physically, though just her name continued to sell ceramics for a further twenty five years. But, from the moment she was inspired to create her stunning Age of Jazz figures she had secured her place as the innovative ceramicist of the thirties. The fact that she ‘married the boss’, moved into his Arts and Crafts house, and then toured the world with him, only enhances her appeal. There are few designers, past or present, who have Clarice Cliff’s charisma. The ceramic spell she cast in the thirties is a force as potent now as it was then.

Leonard Griffin