Clarice Cliff's Influence On My Tea Pot

To this very day, Clarice Cliff, is known as one of the most influential ceramic artists of the 20th century. She is known worldwide in the area of art; her work is collected, valued, and admired throughout many countries. She was born on the 20th of January in 1899 in Tunstall, and died at the ripe old age of 73 on the 23rd of October, 1972. At the age of thirteen, Cliff started work in ‘The Potteries,’ this was the year she discovered her love for designing pots. Her art has influenced many around the world, including mine, the photograph shown in the next paragraph was one of her many pieces that has influenced my own teapot.
The artist has not influenced my teapot hugely, mainly because I had to put my own ideas into it, although her pots
were the one that led me into designing the pot I have been working on these past few weeks. One of her own teapots really caught my eye, not particularly the whole pot itself but the shape of the handle and spout and also the colours she used. I liked how the handle and spout have a modern look to it even though it was designed and created years ago; this inspired me to attempt a similar look to this. As you can see on the picture to the right this is the main teapot that has influenced my own, Cliff has used bright bold colours that stand out, and this made me like the pot even more which has helped me to choose what colours I would like to use. The rest of my pot I designed myself with my own ideas.
The pot that I have chosen for Feldman Framework is the same one that is in the picture displayed above.
You will straight away notice the bright colours used, there are no dark toned colours, this symbolises that it is a ‘happy’ teapot. This could have meant that during Cliff’s time of producing this wonderful creation she went through a bright stage in her life that she was obviously very happy with, although if you research a lot of her pieces you will notice that Cliff has always used bright colours in practically all of her artwork, this could have meant that during her lifetime she never had anything bad happen to her which then had a positive impact on her artwork. As mentioned before this pot looks as if it could have been created sometime this generation, to me it has this modern look to it; I think this is what attracted me to it. The pattern drawn onto it by Cliff herself has a sort of elegant look to it; it is plain and simple yet effective. You can see that it is a bunch of flowers and long bits of grass drawn onto the one side of the teapot; I would have used this design although I have to create a building like teapot so therefore it does not fit into my category. An important thing that I should add is the name of this teapot, Clarice Cliff later on decided she would call it “Umbrellas and Rain,” to me this is quite an unusual name to call it, I don’t really see where this name fits into it, there has been no rain drawn onto the pot and I don’t really quite
see anything on there that represents an umbrella- maybe the lid is the umbrella seeing as it seems to be in the shape of the top of an umbrella.
This teapot is sized at 4.5inches tall by 7 inches wide; it is a small conical teapot that is worth $1095 Australian dollars. When I look at this teapot I get this sense of happiness, it isn’t a boring and depressing teapot, it has bright colours and has just the right amount of colour and line drawn onto it; it isn’t too crowded with shapes, lines and patterns. When people look at this teapot I think that Clarice Cliff would have wanted them to feel attached to it, and as I said before, she wanted them to feel a sense of happiness; I definitely feel that she has achieved that because I feel that when I look at that pot.
Clarice Cliff was born in Meir Street, Tunstall, in the heart of the potteries (the 6 towns of Staffordshire, in the English Midlands which is renouned for their pottery factories).
Cliff was the daughter of both Harry Thomas Cliff and Ann Machin; she grew up alongside her two brothers and five sisters. Clarice attended schooling in Tunstall up until the age of thirteen. Her first job was at Linguard Webster and Co where she was apprenticed as an ‘enameller’ where she learned freehand painting. After 3 years Cliff moved to work as a lithographer at Hollinshead and Kirkham. Clarice Cliff started attending evening classes and in the year of 1916 she decided to join A J Wilkinson’s Royal Staffordshire Pottery which was in Burslem. Then years on, 1957, Clarice Cliff, decided to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art, which was located in London, and then she set herself up in her own studio adjoining the Newport Pottery. The advantages of owning her own studio was that she got to experiment with her own designs that included brightly coloured geometric patterns and shapes, these early designs were called, the now infamous, ‘Bizarre Ware.’ Throughout her whole lifetime Clarice Cliff experienced many new things; she gained more potential in her pottery and strived to achieve excellence in all areas of her
pottery.
Clarice Cliff’s inspirations were many and varied; her work shows us that her main sources of inspiration came from London and Europe. Clarice’s character and passion for design ensured us that she was on track with the fashion and taste. Clarice took a secret trip to Paris with Colley Shorter which fed her love of modernism and flooded her senses with style, colours and form. In London and Paris Clarice was exposed to many fashionable shops, art museums, and exhibitions. Throughout Cliff’s time of creating different styled pots, she always hand painted it with a different pattern, however, she kept the same type of colours; they were always bright colours that stood out. This could have represented her love for her pottery, she enjoyed doing it so much that she used bright and happy colours to symbolise her love for creating pots.
Clarice Cliff achieved a lot in her lifetime, although it wasn’t until later on in her life she started becoming well known for her pottery. She is an inspiration to many who still helps others become successful in their pottery or even just usual art. Many people have purchased her pots and they still continue to purchase them, I bet if she was still around to this very day she would just be overwhelmed with how many people admire her pots. Clarice Cliff is a role model to many and will be for a while I think. To me she is a role model in the way she created her pots and gradually got her way to success, she didn’t do pottery for the money she did it because that was her passion, she just happened to be amazingly good at it.