Clarice Cliff's bold geometric patterns and vivid colours — Bizarre, Crocus, Fantasque — brought modernist abstraction to Staffordshire pottery in the 1920s and 1930s; A poem about the interwar years might use a Clarice Cliff tea service as shorthand for a particular optimism: "orange trees, black triangles, a world rebuilt in primary colours"; Cliff's work, produced by "paintresses" in the Newport pottery, offers poets an angle on women's labour in the decorative arts — the anonymous hand behind the famous name; In a contemporary poem about a grandmother's kitchen, a Clarice Cliff jug might survive as the most vivid thing in the room: "all the rest faded — only the Bizarre jug still shouts"; The tension in Cliff's work between handcraft and mass production — her patterns were applied by teams of women working to templates — suits poems about authenticity and the assembly line; A poem about colour itself might turn to Clarice Cliff: her oranges so orange they seem to contest the grey light of the Potteries.