We watched the final episode of season 4 of The Great Pottery Throw Down this evening—Jodie won! yay Jodie!—and the challenge involved creating something with an Art Deco motif. The Stoke-on-Trent potter Clarice Cliff was mentioned frequently (pron. CLARE-iss) as someone to emulate. Which of course got me curious.
Clarice Cliff was born in 1899 in Tunstall (iron country), and took her first job at the age of 13 as a gilder, adding fine gold lines to traditional pottery. She quickly acquired a variety of skills, including modeling figurines and vases, keeping pattern books, and hand-painting wares. In the 1920s she became known for her "Bizarre" mode of decoration, consisting of simple patterns of triangles. In 1930 she was named art director of two of the famed Staffordshire potteries. The
Wikipedia article gives abundant detail on her life, which I won't go into here, except to note that her creations today fetch prices of tens of thousands of pounds. Her work is featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. She died in 1972.
I will simply offer a few of her patterns here, which include both the painted decoration and the shape and style of the vessels. So pleasing!
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The backside, with signature, of the above rectangular
full pattern Honolulu Biarritz shape plate, c. 1933
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