by Roger Klein // Photography by Jack Saunders
Working with the materials at hand, Dennis Tupy forms a small clay vessel on a potter’s wheel in the basement of Jozo Weider’s ski barn at the base of Blue Mountain. A jauntily-behatted Weider looks on in the background.
It was the early 1950s when Tupy first stepped into heavy clay churned up by bulldozers on the ski slopes at Blue Mountain. As he scraped the thick lumps of sticky mud off his work boots, he casually remarked that it reminded him of the clay he once used in a pottery factory back home in Czechoslovakia, where he trained as a ceramicist.
Tupy had just arrived in Canada. He found work and camaraderie at Blue Mountain with his countryman Jozo Weider, who made a point of hiring fellow Czechs. The two forged a lasting friendship. Combining Tupy’s mould-making skills and Weider’s business acumen, they collaborated to create Blue Mountain Pottery.
After some experimentation, production of the first red clay items started in 1953. Tupy’s designs caught the public’s attention and established Blue Mountain Pottery (BMP) as both iconic and desirable. In subsequent years the BMP kiln fired countless items from animal figurines to bowls, pots, and vases. In the 1960s and ’70s many lucky couples would receive Blue Mountain Pottery as wedding presents.
The success of the pottery enterprise helped Weider’s fledgling ski resort survive some mild winters before snowmaking technology was developed. In the late ‘60s, Weider sold Blue Mountain Pottery to new owners, but the business carried on until 2004.
Through a modern lens, the Escarpment-inspired ceramics with their signature glossy mix of blue and green glazes might appear gaudy. But the “BMP Canada” embossed items are collected worldwide and actively traded online. Both the Gardiner Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum hold Blue Mountain Pottery in their collections.
Today, a large hearth at the centre of The Pottery Restaurant in the Blue Mountain Inn pays homage to the history and importance of the pottery business that grew out of the mountainside mud 70 years ago.
