Anvil Metal & Ceramics

a workshop visit with Ellis White

By Lauren di Matteo

May 20^th, 2022

Meet Ellis White, San Diego-based maker.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with artists’ workspaces. I'm convinced that, if you pay attention, entering into someone's workspace is to begin to understand the maker's mindset, their personality, their process.

And so it goes with Mr. Ellis White. From the moment I walked into his orderly and expansive workshop, he was a fount of knowledge. Talking everything from perfecting craft and streamlining the creative process to surfing, ceramics, and shopkeeping--two hours just flew by.

Together, with his wife, Cait Brooks, Ellis owns a beloved shop in Ocean Beach, called Botanica Home & Garden. A perfect pair, Ellis supplies the shop with handmade pots, plant stands, and various ceramics, and Cait carefully curates their wide variety of botanicals.

Photo: Just blocks from the shop are some of the best breaks San Diego surf has to offer. An avid surfer, Ellis has taken full advantage of the shop's ideal location, testing out his hand-shaped, paulownia wood board.

“To have one’s own space and to be purposeful. Perhaps those are the desires that we can all relate to in our search for our own volition, in our desire for something beyond ourselves yet of ourselves.”

“Risk is the definitive element in a maker’s moment-by-moment relationship with their craft. Risk is also essential to our character development because a life spent within a self-imposed comfort zone never stretches our potential, never draws upon the untapped capacity within.”

"There is creativity in each action of making, in its intentionality and in its cumulative growth into an object of utility and beauty.”

“Art, in this context, is the individual expression of the craftworker who has been steeped in process; it is a manifestation of a will to explore the craft beyond the confines of tradition.”