Clarice Cliff: Stoke’s very own Modernist?

Clarice Cliff created modernist waves in a ceramics industry full of men, we must celebrate her as the visionary modern artist she was.

Picture the scene: it’s a Friday evening sometime in the early 1990s, and I’m in ‘Fessie Park’ McDonalds. My mum’s in the queue - she’s collecting that long awaited Happy Meal, the one that comes with a ‘trendy bumbag’; the very same one that dad will be wearing under his paunch for the next twenty years to store passports, traveller’s cheques and several hundred in Greek Drachma (...oh to be a burgundy passport holder was very heaven!).

Nestled amongst the hubbub of teenage wildlife and fast food muzak, I sit and wait patiently. Letting out a tired sigh, I look up from my yellow plastic chair to the glass cabinet before me. My eyes are met with brash burnt orange and powder blue emanating from an otherworldly teapot that is all hard edges and glorious angularity. 

Unbeknownst to me, this is my first encounter with one of Stoke’s greatest Modernist agitators - the ceramic artist and designer Clarice Cliff. Yes: in McDonalds.

A Bizarre vision

Born in Tunstall in 1899, Cliff rose to become one of the most influential ceramicists of the 20th Century working for most of her career at the A.J. Wilkinson pot bank. Launching her bold ‘Bizarre ware’ in 1927, she set about smashing the global obsession with dour Victorian-style designs. If she’d been one of the 21st Century’s very own ‘Tech Bros’, her opening salvo would surely have forced us to call into question our slavish ceramic choices: “Think you know the humble sugar bowl? Well, think again!”.

But is Bizarre ware really all it’s cracked up to be (...no ceramic-related pun intended!). Well in a word, ‘yes!’. If you’re fortunate enough to see one of these pieces up close - a visit to the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery should do the trick - you’ll be surprised how fresh and timeless they appear. 

Although the curious relics of a golden age, they certainly wouldn’t look out of place in the homes of those of us who like a more minimalist domestic aesthetic - true testament to how groundbreaking Cliff’s vision actually was all those years ago. 

If you like your earthenware vibrant in colour, geometric in design and constructed of razor sharp angles, then you’d better look Clarice and her cast of Bizarre girls up.

Stoke’s modernist matriarch?

Cliff’s story is a critical constituent of the slip that runs through the veins of our great City. She’s not only an example of a woman that worked doggedly to make it in a man’s world, she’s one of the few that truly helped to put our City on the map - particularly from an aesthetic standpoint. 

However, I think we need to go further in our acknowledgement of what Cliff brought to the intellectual dining table (...obviously not just the en vogue salt and pepper shakers of course!).

For me, Cliff was an unsung Modernist. Let’s face it, apart from Virgina Woolf and Gertrude Stein, the Modernist movement is dominated by a boys club in the collective memory - gold plated memberships having been dished out to the likes of T.S. Eliot, Picasso, Le Corbusier and Schoenberg to name just a few. 

But did she not explode the norms of her industry just as much as these ‘Modernist men’? Surely the potbanks of Burslem should be held aloft just as the garrets of Montmartre are? Perhaps I’m overstating it, but I do think Cliff’s part in this particular intellectual, cultural and artistic movement needs some reexamination.

In the meantime, us mere mortals must continue to celebrate this daughter of Stoke and never forget the huge contribution she made - putting this City on the global creative stage.  

Showy - 27 April 2024