Clarice Cliff is in good company in the 
Radio Times magazine. ‘The Bizarre Girl’ the 75-minute radio drama serial based on her life, is their Programme of the Week. A large collage of Clarice, her ware and Bizarre tradename dominate the page, which also includes features about John Lennon and Judy Garland. Ironically, this is rather fitting as she was both ‘a working class hero’ and got her colours from somewhere ‘over the rainbow.’

The feature written by Sue Galsford to introduce the 5 part Radio 4 drama being broadcast December 9th to 15th is well-written and will introduce Clarice’s unique life and talents to thousands more people.
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‘The Daily Express called her ‘Cubism in a teaset - like a Russian ballet masters nightmare, solidified.’ The Illustrated London News, however, recognised its potential to impress and in 1934 advised its readers, ‘a few well-chosen piece of Miss Cliff’s Bizarre ware seem just to add the last touch of distinction to a carefully thought out room’. Anyone following their suggestion would have been making a shrewd investment.

The new Woman’s Hour serial is a dramatisation of the life of this most bold and brilliant designer. Born in 1899, she was apprenticed at 16 to the firm of A.J. Wilkinson in Burslem. and became a ‘paintress’. In spare moments she would beg or borrow clay from the works and use it to models her family’s heads. One day, the boss, Colley Shorter, saw her at work and asked her to make a bust of his late father, working from photographs. She never looked back.

Her designs were - traditionally enough - based on rural life, on flower and quaint cottages, but their originality lay in their unconventional geometric shapes. Shorter sent her to London for a course at the Royal College of Art where her gifts were immediately recognised: on her return, she steered his firm, shining through the darkness of the Depression - and fell in love with him.

This is a warm and colourful story for midwinter. There’s a lesson in it for parents, too: allow your talented child the freedom to paint her room like an Egyptian tomb and, while you’re at it, choose her an alliterative name. Even the wonderful Clarice Cliff might not have done so well in life had she been given her sisters start in life and christened Ethel.