Clarice Cliff

Clarice Cliff was one of the most influential ceramic artists of the 20th century. Born in 1899 in the Staffordshire Potteries, she began working life as a factory girl. By 1928, she had launched her own range of pottery, known as "Bizarre." A dazzling feast of color, it blazed a trail through the homes of interwar Britain. But if Cliff's rise from apprentice gilder to art director was remarkable—all the more so for being a woman—it was not without its tensions: for years she conducted a secr…