STRAIGHT TO one of Britain’s premier provincial salerooms in the troubled town of Salisbury for one of the finest examples of Clarice Cliff seen at auction for many years.
Gracing the catalogue cover of Woolley & Wallis’s sale on March 21 was an extremely rare Clarice Cliff Bizarre-pattern table centrepiece.
‘Age of Jazz’, model No 434, shows two pairs of dancers, sculpted in Art Deco style and painted in vibrant colours. It carried the usual Bizarre printed factory mark and was about 9in in diameter.
Born in the heart of pottery country, in Staffordshire, in 1899, Clarice Cliff was apprenticed at the age of 13 to learn freehand pottery painting. She joined the firm of A. J. Wilkinson at Burslem in 1916 and stayed with them for the rest of her working life.
She began experimenting with bold, bright geometric decoration on a range of ceramic products. In Clarice’s hands, for example, coffee pots became tapering cylinders with pierced triangular bracket handles in brightly coloured glazes and outlandish paint schemes. The factory recognised her potential and marketed the wares under the Bizarre title. It struck a rich vein of popularity and, by 1929, the entire Wilkinson factory was producing Bizarre ware – tea and coffee sets, plates, vases, face masks, preserve pots, bowls and biscuit barrels.
Clarice was made art director, employing 150 decorators, the so-called Bizarre Girls, who boosted sales by giving public painting displays.
Her designs met a new demand for colour after the First World War, and her stylish household ware and decorative pieces have become sought-after collectors’ items.
Age of Jazz was no exception, requiring its new owner to pay a five-times estimate £15,000.
