Taking Tea With Clarice Cliff: A Celebration of Her Art Deco Teaware

Bold, bright hand-painted designs and outrageous shapes are the hallmarks of Clarice Cliff's ceramics. She had a genius for the unconventional. Evoking the spirit of the Twenties and Thirties, her work epitomizes the startling pottery that revolutionized the Staffordshire Potteries industry and brought her spectacular success. Her teapots are avidly collected today; originally three shillings, they now cost thousands of pounds.
Leonard Griffin, the leading expert on Clarice Cliff, celebrates the life and work of the working-class girl who rose from apprentice to designer and became the first woman Art Director in the Potteries. When in 1928 she had the chance to decorate left-over stock of old-fashioned ware, she threw away the rule book and launched her hugely popular Bizarre ware - and her own frantic career. With the encouragement of her mentor Colley Shorter she established her own team of sixty paintresses at her studio and decorating shop at Newport Pottery, her 'Bizarre girls' who executed her zany designs. Her innovative Art Deco shapes, such as her famous Conical with triangular feet and handles or her flat-sided Stamford, in abstract, geometric, landscape and floral patterns - the Fantasque and Crocus ranges among the most popular - found an enthusiastic market for the next ten years.
The inspiration, sources and development of Clarice Cliff's art and the tales of her tremendous teapots are provided here with a directory of designs and shapes (with auction prices provided by Christie's). Illustrated with nostalgically styled photographs, Taking Tea with Clarice Cliff recalls a moment of joy within the great Depression when the joie de vivre of one person could spread a little happiness!