Remembering David Ellsworth

We are sad to share that ACC Fellow David Ellsworth died on June 16, 2025. He was co-founder of the American Association of Woodturners and was known worldwide for his thin-walled hollow vessel forms.

David Ellsworth was born in Iowa City in 1944. He began his college education at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri to study architecture, then attended the New School for Social Research in New York City for study in fine arts. He ultimately received both his BFA (1971) and MFA (1973) in sculpture from the University of Colorado. While participating in a woodworking residency at Anderson Ranch Art Center in 1974 he realized making a living at his craft was a possible vocation. Ellsworth leaned into production work turning small objects such as salt shakers and bowls, and he participated as an exhibitor at many ACC Craft Fairs.

His work evolved away from functional objects over time to more sculptural vessels for the collector market. He is credited with developing a technique for hollowing extraordinarily thin-walled vessels, a technique which he termed “blind turning.” He even developed his own angled tools which allowed for reaching deeply into a turned piece to carve away the walls to a thickness of as little as a 1/8th of an inch. He used sound to judge the thickness as he worked by tapping on the walls of the vessel and listening for an evenly balanced tone. “I wanted to challenge the lathe to see what it could do in much the same fashion as a potter’s wheel,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1984.

Ellsworth eagerly promoted woodturning as fine craft, and generously shared his expertise with others. He taught regularly at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts over three decades beginning in 1983, and he produced numerous articles and videos on woodturning and related topics. He was instrumental in organizing the American Association of Woodturners as a national organization for the field and served as its first president from 1986 to 1991. Ellsworth received professional recognition through various grants and awards, including a 1984 National Endowment for the Arts grant, a 1999 Pew Foundation grant, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Collectors of Wood Art in 2002. He was inducted into the American Craft Council College of Fellows in 2001.

David Ellsworth has been featured in exhibitions across the country, including in The Art of Woodturning (1983) and Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical (1987) at the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design), and his works can be found in collections such as Fuller Craft Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

An oral history interview with David Ellsworth from 2007 can be found on the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website.