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 colourway variation on this by simply changing the trees to shades of blue and pink, and this was then called "Rudyard" after a local Staffordshire beauty spot. Clarice Cliff's fame and success in the 1930s are hard to fully appreciate now, but at that time there was no such thing as 'career women'. The publicity she received in the national press was unprecedented. Research by a PhD student into the contemporary press between 1928 and 1936 found " '360 articles about Cliff and her work were published in the trade press, women's magazines, national and local newspapers'." This was put