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'Fish set' sauce boat and stand
Production:
Shorter & Son Ltd.
Designer:
Cliff, Clarice
(Probably)
Earthenware sauceboat in the shape of a fish on a fish-shaped dish, glazed in matt apricot and green and painted with black enamel
Slip-cast earthenware sauce boat in the shape of a fish with its tail curled up and its mouth open to serve as a spout glazed in matt apricot and green, and painted with black enamel. The fish has a shaped aperture on its back and its sides are moulded overall with scales. Moulded oval stand in the shape of a fish, oval in plan with shallow curved sides and edge. Both pieces are 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.
History note: Purchased from N.J.Zolman, 1996
Given by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
Method of acquisition: Given (1996) by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
20th Century
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. A version similar to the Fitzwilliam items, and attributed to Clarice Cliff, is illustrated in ‘The Quiver’, December 1936, 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.
Stand
Height 2 cm
Length 16.5 cm
Width 12 cm
Boat
Height 9.7 cm
Length 14.7 cm
Plate
Sauce Boat
matt apricot and green
Glaze
Earthenware
Accession number: C.29 & A-1996
Primary reference Number: 74211
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' sauce boat and stand" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/74211 Accessed: 2025-04-03 12:33:27
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/74211
|title='Fish set' sauce boat and stand
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2025-04-03 12:33:27|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/objects/object-74211
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<div class="text-center">
<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa11/C_29_1996_281_29.jpg"
alt="'Fish set' sauce boat and stand"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">'Fish set' sauce boat and stand</figcaption>
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