Is This Relaxing Craft the Hottest Hobby in Hollywood?

In the months after Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, the Allied star found solace behind a lump of clay. Pitt posted up at his sculptor pal Thomas Houseago’s studio for weeks, creating art as a way to ward off “scenarios of fiery demise in my mind,” he told GQ Style for a 2017 cover story.

Later, a British tabloid reported that Pitt had installed a sculpting studio in his own Los Angeles home, and that he and his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood costar Leonardo DiCaprio were having pottery “boys’ nights.” We can’t confirm that this is true, though of course we hope it is. But whether or not DiCaprio actually tried his hand at making a pinch pot, in the years since Pitt’s revelation, more stars have taken up the craft.

One of the most notable is Seth Rogen, who modeled some of the products sold by his cannabis and home goods company, Houseplant, after things he made on the pottery wheel. When he recently showed off the brand’s headquarters in an Open Door video, fans saw that the office is adorned with gloopy orbs, perfectly proportioned ashtrays, and other clay creations.

Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen (she also does pottery) built a studio in their garage “because we just didn’t like leaving our dog at home,” he told AD in an interview at the time of Houseplant’s launch. There, they have all the tools they need to make ceramics in the comfort of their own home, and Rogen has even experimented with making his own brightly-colored glazes. “We were so scared to get [a kiln] at first, but we have fired the kilns over 200 times by now. It really demystifies the process,” he said.

The enthusiasm of the aforementioned men for pottery prompted Artnet to investigate “Bro-ramics” in 2020, and though that may indeed be a phenomenon, there is not and never has been a shortage of female, queer, and non-white ceramicists, famous and non-famous. Solange Knowles, the multi-hyphenate artist who has produced Grammy-winning music, large-scale sculpture, performance art, short films, and more, during her career, hasn’t publicly showed off any handmade mugs or plates, but is a champion of the craft and specifically of Black ceramicists. Earlier this year, her agency, Saint Heron, facilitated an artists-in-residency program in New York City in which four emerging artisans explored, in part, the history of making clay vessels in Africa.

AD’s May cover star, country music phenomenon Kacey Musgraves, waxed poetic about pottery while showing off the art room at her light and bright Lindsay Rhodes-designed Nashville home in a recent Open Door video. “Lately, I have been interested in clay work, pottery wheel,” she said. “I’m kind of honestly really jazzed about that. I had a pottery class last night. That’s my new favorite thing.”

She showed off a small set of plates she made, and later, a sculpture of a camel that sits on her wet bar. “I think I love clay work because, first off, you’re working with earth material and I feel grounded afterwards…It’s also really meditative and kind of hypnotic. There’s really no right or wrong. You don’t have to be good. Even the mistakes look really great,” she said.

Tennis legend Serena Williams shared a snapshot of herself behind the wheel in 2019, with the caption “I’m really getting into pottery.” Two years later, The Loudest Voice star Naomi Watts tried her hand at it, sharing a video of herself doing pottery on Instagram and tagging the popular account @tortus, a Copenhagen-based ceramicist named Eric Landon whose clay videos are incredibly popular. Laura Harrier once told Elle she has a wheel at home and gives her creations as gifts.

For some, it is a relaxing hobby—“It’s like yoga, if you got a thing at the end,” said Rogen. For others, it has become a profession. Carey Lowell, who found fame in the late ’80s and early ’90s with roles in movies like Licence to Kill and Sleepless in Seattle, left her role on Law & Order to pursue ceramics full-time and now has her own line.

Rajiv Surendra—you know him as Kevin G. from Mean Girls—is an apprentice with Guy Wolff, a Connecticut-based artisan whose flowerpots are favored by Martha Stewart. “I read about him in Martha’s magazine and was determined to learn from him so I begged him to let me come, and visit and the rest is history,” said Surendra, a chalk artist and multipotentialite who wears handwoven suits and sleeps on a handmade horsehair mattress, while giving a tour of his New York City apartment to HGTV Handmade’s YouTube channel.

Unlike some Hollywood trends (say, the vampire facial), pottery’s growing popularity is really not specific to the rich and famous. Nadeige Choplet, owner of Choplet Gallery and Ceramic Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, says demand for classes has increased since she opened her business in 2006. “My goal was to meet my neighbors and share my passion for clay with them,” she tells AD. “I wanted to remake the creative hub I experienced during my years at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.” Choplet’s students have always come from a variety of professional backgrounds, and she’s seen plenty of people leave other careers behind in favor of ceramics over the years. But now more than ever, people are turning to pottery for therapeutic purposes. “Demand has increased because of word of mouth, social media, and celebrities,” she says. “It also increased because as we move towards an increasingly virtual world, people realize that in order to feel healthy, they need to stay in touch with reality and use their sense of touch. You can’t be on your device while your hands are covered in clay. It is as simple as that!”