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 Cliff modelling figurines and vases, gilding, keeping pattern books and hand painting ware: outlining, enamelling (filling in colours within the outline) and banding (the radial bands on plates or vessels). In the early 1920s the decorating manager Jack Walker brought Cliff to the attention of one of the two factory owners, Arthur Colley Austin Shorter, who managed it with his brother Guy. Colley Shorter was 17 years older than Cliff, and as well as playing a major role in nurturing her skills and ideas, he was married but was later to be her husband. Cliff was given special attention by her