Made for television
Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down latest craft show to hit the small screen
When it comes to its latest TV show, CBC is kiln it. The public broadcaster debuts The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down on Feb. 8, giving artists countrywide a chance to compete for bragging rights and a trophy. The show will also stream on CBC Gem.
Based on the popular like-named British show, the Canadian edition unfolds over eight one-hour episodes. Jennifer Robertson, who played Jocelyn Schitt on Schitt's Creek, is the host. Ceramics experts Brendan Tang and Natalie Waddell are the judges. Oh, and Seth Rogen — yes, that Seth Rogen — is an executive producer and guest judge.
Rogen's involvement isn't just some bit of celebrity catnip. The actor, producer and director is a co-founder of the cannabis company Houseplant, which sells ceramic lifestyle accessories. He started making ceramics himself after attending classes with his wife in 2017, and he blew up on social media during the pandemic lockdowns as he shared his creations.
“It's been insanely gratifying,” Rogen told Vogue of his hobby in 2021. “I never thought that it was a field I would get into or something
I would feel so passionately about or something that I thought I could express myself so clearly through.”
He's not the only one who strives to seize the clay. Anjelica Huston is an avid ceramicist, and Channing Tatum has been known to throw down. (He's also working on a remake of the 1990 movie Ghost, which did much to boost pottery's sexy factor.) Brad Pitt, too, is a fan — he said in a 2022 interview with JOE.IE that he's seen every season of the British version of The Great Pottery Throw Down.
Part of the appeal no doubt lies in the mindfulness of pottery making.
“Clay acts almost as an antidote to the overwhelm of the digital world,” Jennifer Waverek, the owner of New York-based Bklyn Clay, told the BBC in 2021. “It interrupts your compulsive email-checking. Your mind has a single focus, so the practice can feel meditative or therapeutic. There is no way to speed up clay-drying or firing, there's no `clay-microwave' — ceramics take as much time to make today as they did 2,000 years ago.”
It all seems to be part of the rise in handmade arts in general, and their increasing profile in mass
media. Blown Away, the Canadian reality glass-blowing competition, has aired three regular seasons plus a special Christmas season on Netflix.
Queer Eye expert Bobby Berk hosted one season after becoming a fan of the show, and Architectural Digest noted its role in boosting glass artists in a 2022 article.
Other recent arts and crafty television series include CBC'S Best In Miniature, NBC'S Making It, and HBO Max's Craftopia (now streaming on Crave in Canada). There's also PBS'S Craft In America, a long-running Peabody Award-winning series.
The popularity of artisan-based hobbies stands to grow even more this year. Country Living consulted the craft experts at Wecandoo and Classbento, online platforms that compile local craft workshops, to find out the most popular activities for 2024.
They are tufting, candle painting, woodworking, mosaic making, practical pottery, and crafting for well-being.
Rogen seems to have already experienced the soothing aspects of the latter two. “There's something that's so therapeutic about it,” he told GQ of pottery making in 2019. “It's like yoga, if you got a thing at the end. If you were doing yoga and then some object was produced at the end of it.