Clarice Cliff

Description

Clarice Cliff was one of the most prominent ceramic designers of the twentieth century. Born in 1899 in the Staffordshire Potteries, she started work as just another factory girl, but by 1928 had launched her own range of pottery, `Bizarre'. A `gargantuan feast of colour', it blazed a trail through the homes of inter-war Britain. But if Clarice Cliff's rise from apprentice gilder to art director was remarkable - and all the more so for her being a woman - it was not without its tensions; for years she conducted a secret relationship with her married boss. Fusing art, design and industry and vividly conveying the texture of women's lives between the wars, this is a compelling study of the complex, talented woman whose work is for many the epitome of art deco.

Lynn Knight is a writer, editor and lecturer. She is the editor of Dangerous Calm: The Selected Stories of Elizabeth Taylor.

`A thoughtful and fascinating biography, packed with fabulous pictures' * Image * `Knight deftly uses Cliff's life and work as a way to view broader currents in Britain: increased social mobility, greater (though still limited) independence for women, and changes in domesticity towards smaller houses and fewer servants. At the centre is Cliff herself, a woman who inspired admiration as well as snobbish opprobrium for her vivid designs and ambitiousness' * Financial Times * `Knight's evocative life of Clarice Cliff is both biography and social analysis and it reads like a very sophisticated folk tale ...[She] has done wonders in building up a picture of a woman of exceptional self-reliance and determination' * Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian * `A fascinating read' * Time Out *