WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow. An Antiques Roadshow guest’s jaw dropped as her ceramics was given a staggering price tag she didn’t expect. BBC expert Will Farmer was on hand when the award-winning series ventured to Wales to film at Dyffryn Gardens as a pensioner and her husband presented him with an abundance of ceramics by a well-known artist.
“Here in front of us we’ve got such a broad spread of works by Clarice Cliff, everything from her landscapes, her geometrics, her fruits and florals”, he began. “So I’ve got to ask the question: Is this an inheritance or a collection?” She explained: “Well it’s a bit of both really. We started collecting in 1971.
“I was stopping in an Antiques place not far from here and saw this large bowl and thought ‘that’s something worth having to brighten up our room at home.’ “So we bought it for about £2.50 but I said when I saw that ‘Well that reminds me of the tea dishes that we have at home.
’ “So I spoke to my mother and I said ‘Well, what about those plates?’ and we looked at the back of these geometric plates and there’s the sign, Clarice Cliff Bizarre.” The guest elaborated that her grandparents used to hold garden parties and her grandmother had purchased a whopping 100 Clarice Cliff plates, cups and saucers for the special occasions, much to Farmer’s astonishment. “We thought nothing of them and if one broke, it didn’t matter one bit”, the guest cont.