Born in 1944 in Iowa City, Iowa, David Ellsworth is a distinguished woodturner known for his thin-walled wooden vessels and his many multifaceted contributions to the field.

• Born: 1944
• Hometown: Iowa City, IA
• Education: Washington University
  New School for Social Research
  University of Colorado

Ellsworth was handy as a child, making play weapons for himself and friends. He was first introduced to the lathe in middle school. He pursued turning, art, and choir throughout high school and joined the Army upon graduating in 1962 to sing in the Army Air Defense Command choir. Ellsworth completed three years of service, including a stint in Heidelberg, Germany, before entering the architecture department at Washington University in St. Louis in 1965.

Not the right fit, he soon left the school and relocated to New York City, enrolling at the New School for Social Research, where he studied art for several years before transferring to the University of Colorado to complete his degree (BFA, 1971).

Ellsworth also completed his MFA in sculpture from the University of Colorado in 1973, where he worked mostly in poured resin, but he also helped run the school’s woodshop. He translated his woodworking experience to a job at the Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass, Colorado, where he helped then-director and famed ceramist Paul Soldner build up a wood program.

David Ellsworth’s Studio

After a year at Anderson Ranch, Ellsworth opened his own studio and began developing his signature approach to turning hollowware. He was inspired by the forms of traditional Native American ceramics and bent his traditional turning tools to recreate the narrow openings and thin walls he admired in the pottery.

While gaining wide acclaim for his own body of work, Ellsworth also became leading advocate and educator in the field.

He founded the American Association of Woodturners and was its president from 1986 to 1991. He has also written extensively on craft and opened the Ellsworth School of Woodturning in 1990. His work has been collected and exhibited by numerous museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

He was named a Master of the Medium by the James Renwick Alliance in 2009 and was selected to complete an oral history interview for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art in 2007. David Ellsworth was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2001.