Clarice Cliff

Midlands-based Leonard Griffin, 58, has amassed some 50 pieces of Clarice Cliff pottery, worth in excess of £100,000.

He says: “As a connoisseur I have a collection of pottery – including the rarest Grotesque face mask in the world – acquired over 28 years. In the past though, I have had as many as 150 pieces.

“In 2003 I put two thirds of my collection into Christie’s, London. I just had too much, and it was a way of simplifying my life. The auction raised a substantial sum that I put into diverse investments, including some rare Clarice pieces.

“By 2004 I wanted to get out of the property market, which I have little confidence in. I sold my house then moved to New Zealand to study art and design. I work now not to make money but to enjoy my work. I am able to live almost entirely off my investments, which include two small pensions from my 20 years in commercial radio. I prefer to rent, so financially I don’t need to take a full-time job again.

“I work as a Clarice Cliff consultant for Christie’s two days a year; I run my website for one day a week; and I present a weekly show on Smooth Radio. Clarice Cliff has given me the life I want.”

Griffin first saw Clarice Cliff pottery in 1979 – seven years after her death – and bought a pepper pot for £3.50 at a fair in Derby. He was instantly smitten with the design and colours. “I just thought it was amazing. Soon I was going to antiques fairs every weekend, Saturdays and Sundays, anywhere from London to Manchester, to find more examples. Today the pepper pot would be worth £150.

“At a Nottingham fair in 1982 I found an Art Deco tea set in Clarice’s Melon pattern. It was £68, a lot of money then. Twenty-five years later it’s the centre of my collection and is insured for £3,500.”

Clarice Cliff, born in 1899, worked as an apprentice at a pottery factory near her home in Tunstall, and at 15 studied art at evening classes. At 17, she moved to the factory set up by A.J. Wilkinson, run by Colley Shorter and his brother Guy in Newport, Burslem. Colley gave Clarice a second apprenticeship in 1922. By 1927 she was given her own studio, where she designed simple patterns.

Autumn 1927 saw the launch of Clarice’s Bizarre Ware, pottery with simple triangles in bright colours. The factory had to employ 12 women to handpaint pieces and keep up with demand. Shorter took the groundbreaking decision that each piece should bear Clarice Cliff’s name alongside the Bizarre trademark, and it was an immediate success.

Griffin says: “She acquired fame very quickly because in those days a woman’s name on a piece of pottery – a backstamp – was something of a novelty.”

A year later the Fantasque range came on to the market, which also used the same techniques, with vividly coloured landscapes often featuring cottages.

In 1933 Cliff organised a project with 30 artists to design her tableware. The list included Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf’s sister), Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson, Dame Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash and Dame Laura Knight. Griffin explains: “Original Clarice Cliff, Bizarre and Fantasque, was only made between 1927 and 1936. When King George V died and the country went into mourning, Clarice toned down her colours to suit the mood of the nation. Her work was then only backstamped with her name.”

When Griffin started out on his quest for Clarice Cliff pottery there was only one book on the subject, so in 1982 he founded the Clarice Cliff Collectors Club, to meet other collectors and pool information. From 34 members that first year it has grown to more than 700.

The collector still has a vase in a Trees and House pattern that he bought in 1984 for £330. “Quite a lot of money then,” he adds. “Now it is insured for £2,000. When it was made in the 1930s that vase would have cost about 10 shillings – still a lot of money, when you consider the paintresses were earning six shillings a week.

“In 1997 I was lecturing on Clarice at Napier, the Art Deco town in New Zealand. A dealer there offered me a Clarice Cliff miniature vase with a Tennis pattern for £600. Five years later I sold it for £1,800.”

Griffin admits that sometimes enthusiasm can go too far. At Christie’s in 1989 he paid £4,180 for a Clarice plate in Applique Windmill. He says: “It was competitive bidding and I got carried away. I reckon it was only worth £2,000 at the time. Five years later I sold it for £5,000 because I needed the money for something I wanted more, but then I should never have bought it in the first place.”

The collector believes his long-term faith in Clarice Cliff ceramics is justified. In Salisbury last month a 1931 teaset sold for £13,232. The estimate was just £3,000-£5,000. “Sadly I was not the buyer,” Griffin says.