Clarice Cliff moved to the forefront of British pottery design in the 1920s with her unique, exceptionally shaped and boldly colored wares. Her artistic output was the most comprehensive of any designer in the 1930s and her achievements were unique for a woman of her time. Most enduringly, Cliff introduced avant-garde pottery into homes for the first time as affordable decorative and functional objects. In 1929, the Art Deco style asserted itself on Cliff’s increasingly more complex, geometric, and streamlined shapes.
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Among the most exceptional of Cliff’s last abstracts is Café, a Cubist design that incorporates freehand red, black, and gray squares; red dots on a black ground; and red banding, here applied to an extremely rare and complete coffee set. Its austere clarity echoes Art Deco and De Stijl influences and remains one of Cliff’s most sophisticated patterns. Cliff produced her designs for the British factories A.J. Wilkinson and Newport Potteries in the 1920s and 1930s, serving as Art Director beginning in 1930.
Cliff was born to a working-class family and started working in the pottery industry at the age of 13 as a gilder, a painter who added gold lines to various designs. She studied painting and sculpting at night classes at the Burselm School of Art. Continually seeking to expand her skills, Cliff joined the A.J. Wilkerson factory in 1916 and was soon modelling, gilding, and hand painting. Her talent attracted the attention of the decorating manager and he introduced her to Arthur Colley Austin Shorter, one of the two brothers that owned the firm. Shorter and Cliff became lovers, and after the death of his wife in 1940, the two married. Shorter aided her in further art studies and in 1927 gave Cliff her own studio at the Newport Pottery. At Newport, Cliff created her first line, Bizzare, which was characterized by its simple triangular patterns. The line was immediately popular and Cliff was given the freedom to continue to innovate, developing numerous new lines of vessel forms and patterns. Her accomplishments earned her international acclaim and a level of press attention unheard of for a woman professional.