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'Fish set' sauce boat and stand
Production:
Shorter & Son Ltd.
Designer:
Cliff, Clarice
(Probably)
Earthenware sauceboat in the shape of a fish on a fish-shaped dish, glazed in matt apricot and green and painted with black enamel
Slip-cast earthenware sauce boat in the shape of a fish with its tail curled up and its mouth open to serve as a spout glazed in matt apricot and green, and painted with black enamel. The fish has a shaped aperture on its back and its sides are moulded overall with scales. Moulded oval stand in the shape of a fish, oval in plan with shallow curved sides and edge. Both pieces are covered in a matt, apricot glaze, with pale green glaze lightly applied over on fins and tail and the pupil of the eye painted black.
History note: Purchased from N.J.Zolman, 1996
Given by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
Method of acquisition: Given (1996) by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
20th Century
1930s
Production date:
circa
AD 1935
Another ‘fish set’ was produced by A J Wilkinson in the 1920s/30s. Marked as designed by Clarice Cliff, items in this series have a cream ground and are decorated with a relief, polychrome fish.
Clarice Cliff (1899-1972) joined the pottery industry at 13, as a paintress. She joined A J Wilkinson in 1916 as a lithographer, rising to become a modeller and shape designer. After local evening classes, she studied at the Royal College of Art. In 1929, A J Wilkinson introduced her colourful Art Deco ‘Bizarre’ series, which established her as a well-known designer. In 1940 she married Arthur Colley Shorter, the managing director, and through him became a major shareholder in the family group, founded in the 1870s, which comprised Wilkinson, Newport Pottery and Shorter & Son. Her younger sister Dolly Cliff also worked at Wilkinson’s, supervising a team of specialist decorators, and some of her designs were later issued under Clarice’s name.
‘Fish ware’, one of Shorter & Son’s most popular designs, was first introduced in the late 1920s or early 1930s. A version similar to the Fitzwilliam items, and attributed to Clarice Cliff, is illustrated in ‘The Quiver’, December 1936, described as ‘in a delicious matt cream glaze in pottery [with] only softly subdued turquoise fins as colour accent'. In the 1950s a high glaze version was produced, in various colourways.
Stand
Height 2.0 cm
Length 16.5 cm
Width 12.0 cm
Boat
Height 9.7 cm
Length 14.7 cm
Plate
Sauce Boat
matt apricot and green
Glaze
Earthenware
Accession number: C.29 & A-1996
Primary reference Number: 74211
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "'Fish set' sauce boat and stand" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/74211 Accessed: 2024-12-18 12:23:01
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/74211
|title='Fish set' sauce boat and stand
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-18 12:23:01|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-74211
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<div class="text-center">
<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa11/C_29_1996_281_29.jpg"
alt="'Fish set' sauce boat and stand"
class="img-fluid" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">'Fish set' sauce boat and stand</figcaption>
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