How a Detroit sculptor and a lifelong mentorship shaped Motawi Tileworks
Before Motawi Tileworks became known for its handcrafted art tiles, a Detroit sculptor helped shape the environment where its founder first learned the craft.
Snow covered the grounds of a lakeside mansion in Grosse Pointe when I first met David Ellison. Beneath it, you could already see hints of the landscape he had been shaping there.
The house itself dates to the early twentieth century and was originally built for the head of Detroit’s Murphy Chair Company. Ellison has been working on the property with the homeowner for quite some time, gradually transforming the grounds into something that feels less like a suburban estate and more like an English country garden. A rose garden anchors one section of the landscape. A swimming pool is lined with Ellison’s sculptural tiles, including a massive terra cotta dolphin diving into the water. A sauna nearby features relief tile gargoyle dogs painted dark brown to resemble carved wood.
Salvaged columns frame parts of the garden, lending the space the atmosphere of a courtyard somewhere in the Cotswolds.
Watching Ellison talk through the details of the project, it quickly became clear that he approaches landscapes much the same way he approaches ceramics: assembling materials, textures, and references until a place feels as though it has grown naturally over time.
“I consider myself kind of a maker really,” he says.
That instinct toward making—across materials and disciplines—runs through Ellison’s entire career. It has taken him from fiberglass hot rods to bronze casting, from architectural salvage to ceramic sculpture. Along the way, it also placed him at an important moment in the history of American tilemaking: the years when Motawi Tileworks founder Nawal Motawi was first learning the craft.
Detroit Origins
Ellison’s path into ceramics began far from a pottery studio.
Before he became known for sculptural tile and architectural ceramics, he was working in Detroit’s automotive culture fabricating fiberglass parts for classic hot rods.
“I used to make fiberglass fenders for like 1933 Dodges,” he recalls. “Running boards, all this stuff. I was like the only guy in the country.”
The work required careful mold-making and a deep understanding of materials—skills that would later translate easily into sculpture and ceramics. At the same time, Ellison was collecting architectural salvage from Detroit mansions slated for demolition, studying the details of historic ornament and craftsmanship.
Those interests eventually led him into bronze casting. When a client asked if he could produce custom bronze hardware—door knockers and sconces—Ellison simply decided to figure it out.
“One guy wanted to know if I could cast bronze,” he remembers. “I go, yeah, I guess I could. This could be cool.”
Detroit’s manufacturing culture shaped the way he approached materials. In automotive fabrication, any custom work should look as though it had always been there. “When you're doing a modification on cars,” Ellison explains, “you want it to look like factory.”
Those instincts—experimenting across materials and learning by doing—eventually led Ellison into ceramics and to one of Detroit’s most storied tile studios: Pewabic Pottery.
Pewabic and the Revival of Tile
Ellison eventually arrived at Pewabic Pottery, the historic Detroit ceramics studio founded in 1903. When he began working there, the institution itself was going through a period of transition.
“When I first got to Pewabic, it was part of Michigan State,” Ellison says. “It was their ceramics pottery.”
Budget cuts eventually forced the university to step away from the studio. Supporters formed the Pewabic Society to keep the organization alive, and tile production—once central to Pewabic’s identity—needed to be rebuilt from scratch.
“They decided, we’ve got to make some money here,” Ellison recalls. “We should make tiles again.”
Ellison helped make that happen. He built molds, fired kilns, designed projects, and set up the equipment needed to bring tile production back to life.
“I taught classes, designed the jobs, fired the kilns, ordered the equipment,” he says. “Just a one-man band.”
Soon after, a young University of Michigan graduate named Nawal Motawi began working at Pewabic. “Nawal got there in the early nineties,” Ellison remembers.
Motawi initially handled bookkeeping while absorbing the realities of studio production.
The experience exposed her to molds, glazes, kilns, and the practical challenges of making tile in a working studio.
Years later she would reflect on Ellison’s influence during that time.
“David was a significant influence on me,” Motawi says. “He was a mentor in tilemaking, but also in how to approach creative work in general. He’s one of those people who sees possibilities everywhere. He’s a creative genius.”
Handmade, Not Homemade
Ellison has a way of finding humor in craft traditions that others treat with solemn reverence.
“There’s a very fine line between handmade and homemade,” he says, laughing. “Handmade is good. Homemade is bad.”
For Ellison, the distinction comes down to discipline and intention. Handmade objects retain the human touch while remaining carefully constructed. Homemade objects often reveal a lack of control. Ceramics allows more variation, but Ellison still approaches tile as part of an architectural composition.
“You don’t want to use commercial grout,” he notes. “If you look at old Rhead or Rookwood, the grout has a stoniness to it.”
Perfect symmetry doesn’t interest him much either.
“They want to turn everything into perfect rows,” Ellison says. “I keep telling them—romance, romance.”
“There’s a very fine line between handmade and homemade. Handmade is good. Homemade is bad.”
— David Ellison
Ellison’s Work in the World
I saw another side of Ellison’s work the next time we met, at the Annual Potters Market in Oakland. The market gathers ceramic artists from across the region, and Ellison’s displays stood out, reflecting the range of his practice. Relief tiles of various sizes covered the tables and walls—some small enough to hold in one hand, others large sculptural panels intended for architectural settings.
His work moves easily between those scales. A small tile might appear on a fireplace surround, while a much larger piece might become part of a garden wall or fountain.
That same sculptural sensibility also found its way into Motawi’s own story.
When Nawal Motawi renovated a 1920s farmhouse in Ann Arbor, she transformed one bathroom into a richly tiled environment she later called the “Tapestry” bathroom—a layered composition of relief tile, color, and pattern inspired by historic decorative ceramics.
At the center of the room sits a carved relief tile panel set within an alcove. The piece was created by David Ellison.
The Next Generation at Motawi
The Ellison connection to Motawi continues today through Lexi Ellison, one of the studio’s bulb glazers. Her work focuses on Motawi’s Cuenca-style art tiles, carefully applying glaze so that color settles evenly within the raised lines of each design. These glazers are responsible for much of the depth and richness that define Motawi’s art tiles.
Outside the studio, Lexi also pursues her own ceramic work. She frequently sells sculptural tile at Motawi’s employee markets—including the studio’s Winter Market, where staff artists share their independent work with the public. Through her work at Motawi and her own artistic practice, the Ellison family’s connection to the studio now spans two generations.
That influence shows up in other ways as well. Today, among the clay bodies produced by Rovin Ceramics—Motawi’s sister company and exclusive clay supplier—there remains one named simply for the artist: Ellison White Stoneware.
The material was originally developed for the kind of sculptural tile and architectural ceramics Ellison has spent a lifetime creating.
“It’s coarse and it’s great for building outdoors and deep relief tiles or very tall sculptures,” said Steven Johnson, general manager of Rovin Ceramics.
Similar sculpture bodies exist elsewhere, Johnson notes, but Ellison’s work has always stood apart.
“[Other clay manufacturers] do have similar sculpture bodies to this,” he said, “but nobody else has David Ellison sculpture.”
It’s a fitting way for Ellison’s influence to continue. The clay that once supported his own sculptures is now available to other artists, extending the same possibilities to a new generation of makers.
And in Ann Arbor, inside the Motawi studio where his daughter Lexi applies glaze to rows of Cuenca tiles, that lineage is still unfolding—one tile, one glaze line, one maker at a time.
