There is a scarcity of information about Starnes California Pottery., Walter Starnes was a  pottery dealer rather than a manufacturer, and then only for a brief period.  Here are some snippets of information I have collected   – this page is a work in progress.

Walter D.  Starnes married Marjel Brown (1911-2000) the daughter of Lewis W Brown, a notable business man who was owner of the Southern California Crockery Company.

For the brief time he was in business Walter Starnes commissioned pottery for resale and holds patents for some of the designs, many of the pieces were manufactured at local California potteries, notably Sierra Vista Ceramics.

Marjel Brown took over toys, housewares, and glass retail store, Lewis W. Brown Company in Pasadena for her father. She owned multiple toy stores. Married and divorced from Walter Starnes, she then married William Vicinus.  Source: Marjel Ansys Brown (Vicinus) – Class Of 1929

A Report in The Pottery and Glass Salesman Vol 17,  mentions Starnes father-in-law Lewis W Brown of the Southern Crockery Company, Los Angeles who was affiliated with the Dohrmann company a china importer with large stores on the west coast and offices in New York.  He traveled to NY  with a representative of Parmelee-Dohrmann  the “largest china and arts goods store on the Pacific Coast.”

“Roy Castner of the Parmelee Dohrmann Company and Lewis W Brown of the Southern Crockery Company both of Los Angeles Cal are in the city on Friday and will of course make their headquarters at the local office of the Dohrmann Commercial Company both the Los Angeles houses being affiliated with the Dohrmann interests.”

A Dohrmann Company partners resides permanently in Europe to “attend to the selection and purchase of art and other high-class goods; the management of the business in San Francisco“. The employed their own the glass engravers and porcelain painters, presumable to decorate the imported porcelain and pottery blanks.

When Walter Starnes, married, his wife was aready involved in the family business which was affiliated with Dohrman and possibly operated on similar lines, she owned several stores and Walter became involved in the china and pottery business and began designing and commissioning crockery. There are some patents listed in his name. Later after his divorce he seems to have left the business, or went the way  of many of the California pottery companies who thrived during the war years when imports were restricted only to be priced out of the market when cheap goods flooded the market in the 1950’s.

Ref:

• Wikipedia California pottery page as Starnes (Walter Starnes), Los Angeles, 1952–1954, Tableware.
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/sfbdohrm.htm
• NATHAN, DOHRMANN & CO. The Bay of San Francisco: The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast and Its Suburban Cities : a History, Volume 2 (Google eBook)
• http://www.postcard.org/sfbapcc2014-01-s.pdf great article and pictures of pre-fire era Dohrmann store in S F
• https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=ininventor:”Walter+D.+Starnes”