The Colour Room

Despite resistance, Clarice Cliff persisted in suggesting her ideas while working on the factory floor in potteries. Instead of mastering one skill to improve her earnings, she started one apprenticeship as an enameller, and then another as a lithographer at another factory to learn different aspects of production. Although supporting her widowed mother and her sister, she risked destitution by changing jobs so often. All of the potteries still had Victorian perceptions of what women wanted in terms of design. Cliff then got a job at another pottery as an apprentice modeller, a role rarely taken by a woman, and became apprenticed to designer Fred Ridgeway.