Clarice Cliff Vase
with guest contributor Elizabeth Adeline
I always knew this Clarice Cliff powder blue vase belonged to my father, Thomas Sayer Volans. I imagine it was one of a small collection of flower vases that he won in painting competitions he entered as a young art student, before he felt called to the Church. But I’m not really sure. What I am sure about it that he loved to have this vase full of flowers in his study, which was his special place in Little Eversden Rectory.
My father loved flowers, especially sweet peas which he grew in rows in the vegetable garden. I don’t think he did any heavy digging, Mr Pell from the village took care of that. But he would go out and carefully dead head, tie them in them, and pick bunches to take indoors. I liked to go out and chat with him while he did this; he didn’t have special gardening clothes but always took off his clerical collar and worked in his collarless shirt and braces. His aim was to get the sweet peas good enough to show at the village Flower and Vegetable Show: they would need to have five flowers, if not seven, on each nice long stem.
He won this vase, along with some other less beautiful ones, in painting competitions he and his sister Clare entered; these were set up by the various chocolate companies established by Quaker families in Yorkshire – Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. Auntie Clare once asked her brother why she never won. He said that it was because she didn’t put enough paint on the paper and then demonstrated by adding extra paint to his picture. He thought he had overdone it, saying he certainly wouldn’t win now, but did!
I don’t remember having flowers anywhere in the house except in my father’s study. I think my mother found them tiresome, and annoying when they died on her. She felt the same way about cut flowers on a grave in the churchyard. But I have inherited my father’s custom, I love to have a vase of flowers on the table or window shelf all year round, usually picked from our garden. And we have a whole shelf full of vases to suit different kind of flowers!
For an illustrated account of Elizabeth’s early life at Little Eversden Rectory, and also on her grandparents’ farm in Ireland, see her books available from the author or Lulu Books.