Clarice Cliff was an English potter known for the bright colors and bold patterns of her Art Deco style ceramics.  In contrast to the simple geometric decorative motifs of the Machine Age, Cliff’s wild and freehand interpretations of geometry and nature were thought by some to be “Bizarre.”

Born in 1899, Cliff was working as an apprentice free hand pottery decorator by the age of 13, and within a few years, was trained at the A.J. Wilkenson Royal Staffordshire Pottery in modeling and designing.

By 1927, she had her own studio within the larger Newport Pottery in Burslem.  Here, she introduced Bizarre Ware, a line of domestic pottery with a warm, honey glaze, distinctive forms, and boldly colored hand painted decorations.  Cliff and her team of woman decorators (known as the Bizarre Girls) applied paint thickly, frequently inside black outlines with visible brush strokes.  Beginning in 1928, her products were marked with a backstamp indicating the pattern name along with Cliff’s name, and the word, Hand painted.

Although the popularity of her work has been growing over the last twenty or so years, not all of her over 2,000 patterns are equally desirable.  Value of a Clarice Cliff piece is determined by a combination of shape, pattern, and condition.  For example, a plate in the more reserved and easy to find May Avenue pattern will be worth considerably less than  that same pattern on a conical sugar shaker, and even less than a popular, exuberant pattern such as Crocus on the same shaker. 

A Crocus sugar shaker can bring $400-600, and a Lotus pitcher in the Sliced Circle pattern, popular with collectors, might bring as much as $10,000.