Highly Collectible Set of Nine Vintage English George V (1940s) Royal Staffordshire “Chelsea Rose” Dinnerware Porcelain Pieces By “Clarice Cliff” .

These are some of Clarice Cliff’s earliest works. Lovely pieces. Very rare and collectible. Please browse all 12 sets of photographs attached for size and condition as they are self explanatory.

Contains:

1 Cake Plate (Repaired)

1 Bowl

3 Tea Cups

4 Saucers

TOTAL 9 Pieces

Approximate weight: 1.5kg

Around 80 years old so obviously not new but there are no chips nor cracks and minimal crazing to 8 pieces but the largest piece, the cake platter, was at some point in the past broken in half and professionally repaired so please browse the last four photographs very carefully and enlarge them to see the repair. This piece might even crack again in transport although I will do my utmost to pack it carefully so it reaches you intact.

George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was concurrently the last Emperor of India until August 1947, when the British Raj was dissolved.

"Royal Staffordshire Pottery" was the factory of A. J. Wilkinson and early ware c.1891 - c.1910 sometimes have the factory name without the company name.

Clarice Cliff was born (1899) into a working class family in Tunstall. She showed artistic promise at school and left at age 13 to work as an apprentice enameller at a local factory 3 years later moving to another firm as an apprentice lithographer, at the same time she attended evening classes at Tunstall School of Art.

In 1916 at 17 she joined A J Wilkinson's pottery where her drawing brought her to the attention of the owner, Colley Shorter and he allowed her to experiment on some old stock. In 1927 he arranged for her to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. Later in 1927 she studied in Paris.

After a few months there she returned to Stoke-on-Trent where Shorter set her up in a decorating studio. By 1929 her designs went into full production as 'Hand Painted Bizarre by Clarice Cliff'. By 1931 she was an Art Director of the factory with a decorating team of around 150. Clarice Cliff and Shorter eventually married. She died in 1972.

Rare combinations of shape and pattern attract very high prices at auction. The world record price for a piece of Clarice Cliff is held by Christie's, South Kensington, London, who sold an 18-inch (460 mm) 'charger' (wall plaque) in the May Avenue pattern for £39,500 in 2004. Shortly after this the same auction house sold an 8-inch (200 mm) vase in Sunspots for £20,000!

A rare Red Autumn shape 369 vase sold for £4900 at Fielding's auctioneers, Stourbridge in the West Midlands, and Woolley and Wallis auctioneers Salisbury sold a 3-inch (76 mm) high miniature vase in Café (used as a salesman's sample in the 1930s) for a staggering £3000.[32] In May 2009 an eighteen-inch charger in the May Avenue pattern sold for £20,500 at Fielding's auctioneers.

In 2009 Will Farmer of the BBC Antiques Roadshow and members of the Clarice Cliff Collectors Club unveiled three plaques. These were on her birthplace, Meir Street, Tunstall, her second home on Edwards Street, Tunstall and the site of Newport Pottery by the canal in Burslem where her Bizarre ware was decorated. These were featured in special Antiques Roadshow programme that December.

In September 2009 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened its 'New Ceramics Galleries' and Cliff's work was chosen to be included: "There will be two rooms displaying 20th-century collections. One will show ceramics made in a factory context and will include objects by designers such as Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff".

The exhibition and the first book published privately in 1976 'Clarice Cliff' by Peter Wentworth-Sheilds and Kay Johnson (L'Odeon publishing) marked the start of a major revival of interest in Cliff's work, which has continued to be sought after by ceramic collectors, around the globe, ever since.