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'Fish set' small dish
Production:
Shorter & Son Ltd.
Designer:
Cliff, Clarice
(Probably)
Earthenware, glazed in matt apricot and green, painted with black enamel.
Moulded earthenware dish in the shape of a fish. Circular base, shallow curved sides and fish-shaped edge. The interior is moulded with scales, a fin, and the mouth, eye and gill of the fish. The whole piece is 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. Three spur marks near the edges.
History note: Purchased from N.J.Zolman, 1996
Given by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
Height: 2.2 cm
Length: 23 cm
Width: 20.8 cm
Method of acquisition: Given (1996) by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
20th Century, Mid
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. The Fitzwilliam holds a serving bowl and cover, a sauce boat and stand, a serving dish/plate and six small dishes/plates in this series. A similar version is illustrated in ‘The Quiver’, December 1936; it is attributed to Clarice Cliff, and 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.
Decoration composed of enamel ( black) glaze ( matt green and apricot)
Moulding
: Earthenware, moulded, covered with matt pale apricot glaze overall, and painted with green glaze on the fins, and with black enamel on the eye.
Glazing (coating)
Accession number: C.35-1996
Primary reference Number: 197256
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 (2025) "'Fish set' small dish" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/197256 Accessed: 2025-05-20 15:07:45
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/197256
|title='Fish set' small dish
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2025-05-20 15:07:45|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa6/C_31_1996.jpg"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">'Fish set' small dish</figcaption>
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