Clarice Cliff to decorate some of the old defective 'glost' (white) ware in her own freehand patterns. For these she used on-glaze enamel colours, which enabled a brighter palette than underglaze colours. She covered the imperfections in simple patterns of triangles, in a style that she called 'Bizarre'. The earliest examples had just a hand-painted mark, usually in a rust coloured paint, 'Bizarre by Clarice Cliff', sometimes with 'Newport Pottery' underneath. To the surprise of the company's senior salesman Ewart Oakes, when he took a car load to a major stockist, it was immediately popular. Clarice was joined by young painter Gladys
Clarice Cliff her shared passion with Shorter. After the war, although Cliff was occasionally nostalgic for the 'Bizarre' years, as witnessed in personal letters to friends, she seemed to be realistic and accepted the commercial taste was for conservative ware. Clarice seemed to enjoy playing a lesser role at the factory, knowing that she could not recapture those crazy days of the thirties. Much of the post-war production went to Australia, New Zealand or North America, where the taste was for formal ware in traditional English designs such as "Tonquin" rather than the striking patterns and shapes that had established Cliff's reputation;