Profile in Success: Dave Ely
Decorative toilet seat lids are now among the best-selling items on Ely's Web site and in retail outlets, purchased, he says, mostly by women for their husbands in hopes that a more interesting toilet lid will inspire them to put the seat down when finished. Retail cost for a toilet seat featuring a 12-point buck or a large-mouth bass is $125.
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Carved bowl by Dave Ely |
Ely is a self-taught wood carver who began his career as a hobby about 15 years ago.
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Carved figure by Dave Ely |
Now, he spends about 35 hours a week filling orders and creating new designs, working around his full-time job as a graphic designer for a sign company. He hopes 2005 will be the year he can leave that job behind and devote his energies entirely to creating one-of-a-kind functional objects reflecting the beauty of the North Dakota landscape. Bowls, vases, candleholders and chess sets are the canvas for his work, which now makes up about half of his annual income.
"I'm very much a realist in my work and I love the outdoors,” says Ely, who sometimes uses photographs of animals as he carves, but just as easily finds inspiration from camping outdoors on a 40-below-zero North Dakota winter night.
'Big Break' comes from unlikely place
The break that all artisans hope for, the one that Ely believes will send him over the top in the coming year, came about 18 months ago when King Arthur's Tools of Florida introduced a two-inch miniature chainsaw to fit on an angle grinder. The smaller size appealed to Ely, who struck up a friendly relationship over the telephone with a sales representative while placing his order.
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| Wood for more of Ely's carvings gets unloaded. |
The salesperson eventually bought one of Ely's carved bowls as a gift and then another and another. Others in the company admired Ely's work and soon asked permission to use pictures of his work on the packaging sleeve and in advertisements for the mini-chainsaw. In conjunction with the tools, Ely's products soon appeared on the QVC home shopping network, HGTV and CNN. Always giving credit to the artist for the creation, King Arthur's Web site features Ely's work and provides a link to his Web site.
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| Hand-carved bowl with detailed pine cones around the edges. |
Prior to his affiliation with King Arthur's Tools, about 90 percent of Ely's sales were through a couple dozen retail outlets in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming. About 170 bowls was a very good year. Slowly, more and more sales began to take place over his Web site and he began to raise his prices. This holiday season, Ely expects about 90 percent of his sales to come from the Internet.
King Arthur's also invited Ely to demonstrate the mini-chainsaw at a woodcrafters' showcase in Charleston, W.V. The company paid Ely's travel expenses, including shipping his product to sell at the show. "I didn't think I'd be able to sell anything to a bunch of guys who were woodcarvers themselves, but I sold six $150 bowls in two hours,” Ely says. At the International Woodcarving Showcase in Toronto, Ely took two dozen bowls and sold them all. In a few months, he'll represent King Arthur's at a similar event in London and he's planning to take at least four dozen bowls.
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"Buffalo Bowl" |
As good as his luck has been with King Arthur's Tools, Ely gives equal credit for his early successes to a friend named Julie in Bismarck who has always believed in his work. Ely himself has never entered a craft show, but Julie has taken it upon herself to enter and work a number of craft fairs on his behalf. She filled out the paperwork that allowed him to become a juried artisan in the Safari Club International Show in Reno, Nev., and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Show in Denver. "She just talks me up to everybody she knows,” Ely says. "As long as I have Julie and King Arthur's, I don't need advertising or a marketing plan."
No project too weird for this artist
Ely admits to getting into a lot of weird projects. He once carved a dental implant, a prosthetic tusk of sorts, for a female African elephant who starred in a Snickers Candy Bar commercial.
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He also created props for the film "Woolly Boys" starring Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson and David Carradine. Fonda's character is a woodcarver who could never quite finish a project. An eagle in flight created by Ely appears behind the closing credits of the movie.
His most challenging "weird" project was to carve a life-size statue of Clyde the Bear for the Dakota Zoo in Bismarck. Clyde was the largest Kodiak bear in captivity, who lived in the Dakota Zoo and died in 1987. The completed project was 13 feet tall, weighed more than 7,000 pounds and took Ely about two years to complete. Clyde now greets nearly 120,000 visitors a year at the zoo Discovery Center. Ely's bowls are also sold at the zoo gift shop. "I just never turn down any project and everything seems to make sense,” he says.
Over the years, Ely has experimented in numerous media, including stone, steel, leather, plastic and bone. But wood has been the medium he finds most interesting. "I usually start out with an idea in mind and then search for a piece of wood that will fit, most of the time making adjustments as I go,” he says. "It's more fun to think on your feet and some of my worst mistakes end up being the most creative products in the end."
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"Antler Bowl" |
Ely works in walnut, American mahogany and pine, but his preference is cedar, an abundant wood in North Dakota. He gathers much of the fallen wood free of charge on a ranch owned by his sister and brother-in-law — the one for whom Ely made the toilet seat. The ranch is near the town of Medora on North Dakota's western border. Historians of presidential history will recognize the name Maltese Cross Ranch as the one once owned by Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States. "We stick a little card in with all of my products that says the wood was gathered from Teddy Roosevelt's ranch, and people kind of like that,” Ely says simply, knowing full well the unique value such wood brings to the product.
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In addition to the famous toilet seats, Ely's merchandise includes candlesticks that retail for $40, and vases and bowls that sell for between $150 and $400. He also carves chess sets that sell for up to $3,200 and include a handmade board. Many of his sales are to collectors and much of it is repeat business.
"People will collect just about anything and they just hunt me down,” he says. "It's really kind of scary."
Diana Lambdin Meyer is a Missouri-based free-lance writer.