Tom Ellis grew up near Houston and enjoyed woodworking in his teens – mostly building surfboards. He built his first mandolin in 1972, which began the course of his career as a luthier.

Soon after he completed his first instrument, he moved to Austin, TX and established his workshop on 3 acres and started building mandolins as a business. He showed his second mandolin, a from-scratch F-5, to Ricky Skaggs who thought that it sounded pretty darn good. The unique voice of Ellis mandolins was praised by David Grisman in a February '81 Frets Magazine article where he identied Tom as one of the top 5 mandolin builders alive.

Tom does all of the top voicing, graduating, and tone bar installation, along with graduating the backs and shaping the necks of each instrument. Pava Knezevic lends her expertise to help with body assembly, and with her incredibe binding work that frames all of Tom's final carving.