Clarice Cliff (née Machin) took in washing to supplement the family income, and they had seven children. Cliff was sent to a different school from her siblings, and this perhaps prompted her more independent approach to her career, and her non-standard life style by Stoke-on-Trent standards. After school Cliff would visit an aunt who was a hand painters at a local pottery company, and she also made models from papier-mâché at school. At the age of 13, Cliff started working in the pottery industry. Her first work was as a gilder, adding gold lines on ware of traditional design. Once she had
Clarice Shaw personal interest in medical and child welfare issues. In 1916 she was appointed as the Women's Labour League representative to attend meetings of the Scottish Executive Committee of the Labour Party. There she met, worked with, and eventually married in Edinburgh in July 1918, Benjamin Howard Shaw, first Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party. The couple complemented each other in terms of political ideas and tastes, teetotalism, and temperance reform. Both she and Ben Shaw were also closely associated with the Glasgow Socialist Sunday School, of which Clarice was the national president for twenty-five years. The marriage did not produce