One other thing I decided to start doing is having fun with identifying California pottery. We’ll make a sort of game out of it once in awhile. No prize, but I’m just curious if you can identify which of the above items is made by Jaru Art Products and which is made by California Cleminsons. I might add - WITHOUT looking in books, on Ebay or on the internet. I have to admit that I did have to consult a book to make sure after finding the one on the left a little while ago at a thrift store.

The problem of identification of a lot of California pottery is that in the boom years (and later as well) many companies took “inspiration” from each other. Others copied lines outright. This was especially true of lines that sold well - and it was very difficult, though not impossible, to enforce any copyrights on design. Although, a lot of times the similarity wasn’t completely intentional. Many aspiring potters and pottery owners learned and were influenced by a mentor or mentoring company - so it wasn’t a surprise that some of their items looked the same.

This particular design was an original concept by Jaru’s Jack Hirsch (not helpfully) called “Starburst”. Cleminsons later produced a line very similar to this. Both were speckled white, and were produced with starbursts in yellow, red and blue (the one on the right actually has yellow and red starbursts on the other side). I believe that Jaru made these in black as well as white. Also, according to Chipman, the Jaru examples were produced by a manufacturing arm of Jaru’s called Houser and Red Ceramics (this was Victor Houser and Robert Red, formerly from Bauer).

One other confusing thing about the two lines is that NEITHER has markings on the actual item. I believe that Jaru had a paper stamp, and Cleminsons may have also had one. But as is the case with much ceramic ware, the stickers were removed.

OK I’ll leave the guessing up to you, and post the answer next week in case anyone is interested.

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All right, so the answer is that the vase on the left is Jaru, and the vase on the right is Cleminsons. You can tell primarily by the way the starbursts look - on Cleminsons items some of the lines are “detached” from the center dot, making it look more like arrows pointing inward. I believe that one or both of the lines may have had original stickers, but don’t count on those for identification. I haven’t seen one of these yet that had a sticker. Shapes may also be used to identify them, but I’m not familiar with all of them. I have to add that, the method of identifying the two companies by the “arrows” SEEMS to be correct in most cases. But I don’t have anything to back this up, it’s just from experience of seeing the different items.