Circus dinner service

In 1934 Dame Laura Knight was commissioned to create this dinner service design by noted ceramicist Clarice Cliff for the Staffordshire ceramic manufacturing firm, Arthur J. Wilkinson Ltd. Knight was an English figurative realist painter who worked in oils and watercolours and used printmaking techniques such as etching, engraving and drypoint. She studied at Nottingham School of Art and went on to have an enduring and successful career, becoming the first woman to be elected an Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Knight had a long fascination with circuses, even going on tour in 1929 and 1930 with the combined Bertram Mills and Great Carmo’s Circus. The figures of circus dancers and performers often featured in her work and in this dinner service she depicts dancers, clowns, performing horses, bears, seals and acrobats, with some of the figures becoming moulded handles and finials for teapots, tureens and candlesticks. This service was shown as part of the Modern Art for the Table exhibition at Harrods in 1934, in which twenty-seven leading British artists of the day were combined with manufacturing companies to create designs for tableware. The exhibition went on to tour Britain and later Australia, where it was shown at Myer Emporium, Adelaide, in 1936. Aptly, the Gallery’s set was purchased by the Wirth family, the largest circus in Australia between 1880 and 1963.

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design

Tansy Curtin, Curator of International Art Pre-1980