OBITUARY: David Ell, publisher

One of the most amusing of these was his trespass onto a lawn at a grand Central Coast house to take a photograph of plaster gnomes wearing sombreros.

He asked his driver to stop the car some distance away and to wait with the engine running. He sneaked up to the gnomes and began pulling weeds out so he could take a wide angle shot.

Within minutes a door opened and a woman yelled: ‘‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’’ Ell continued weeding while the woman disappeared into the house. She returned with a saucepan to use as a weapon.

‘‘Can’t you see I’m f---ing weeding the garden, you uncultured buffoon,’’ he yelled, and then beat a retreat. But Ell had his snap.

Fine photography was a mark of the handsome books on Australia’s heritage that Ell published from the late 1970s to the end of the ’80s.

At David Ell Press, he controlled every detail of production, brushing aside cries of ‘‘it cannot be done’’ and proving it usually could.

David Paul Vaughan Ell was born on October 20, 1940, the youngest of six children to Cyril Vaughan Ell and his wife, Agnes.

He went to Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview and worked in Cyril’s bookshop in Newcastle. This was probably the best possible training because all the staff, whatever their position, appeared to be book people. The shop had a nationwide reputation for excellence.

After studying decorative arts at Newcastle University, Ell took a short course in publishing at Harvard. He also set out on a career with a natural instinct for finding the best people and joining them together to establish the best creative teams for a project.

This was not only for commercial ventures. He spoke to chief executives with the same ease as he spoke to the homeless and gave them equal time - Ell had a rasping guffaw of a laugh and sometimes opened up on subjects with an oblique angle.

Photography was high on his list of interests, not only in production but in choice of subject.

In 1980, he published monographs on Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain. These related, at least peripherally, to his first love and most continous obsession, Australia's heritage.

In 1977 Ell had published First Fleet to Federation, devoted to Australiana, to accompany a watershed exhibition, organised by the Women's Committee of the National Trust at Lindesay in Darling Point. The floodgates of interest in the subject opened.

Mounted emu eggs began to appear on mantelpieces in affluent eastern suburbs homes, and forks made by colonial silversmiths accumulated in wealthy north shore cupboards (later banished to bank vaults as prices rose).

Not a good year for selling anything recessionary, 1981 saw the release of his exhaustive Australian Mining, Minerals and Oils by John Alexander and Richard Hattersley, which flew out of the door as investors searched for knowledge on other natural Australian resources. Ell also published art museum exhibition catalogues and, also in 1981, Angling in Australia: its History and Writings, by Bob Dunn.

As the Bicentenary of European settlement approached, a flood of tomes on the subject was produced. Ell's Gothick Taste in the Colony of New South Wales by Joan Kerr and James Broadbent appeared in 1980 and his Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture by Kevin Fahy, Christina Simpson and Andrew Simpson in 1985. The lighter (the furniture book was a wrist-breaker) Australian Pottery of the 19th and early 20th Century by Marjorie Graham came out in 1987 along with perhaps Ell's most majestic publication, First Views of Australia 1788-1825, by Tim McCormick. Often spreading the risk with joint venturers, Ell turned a profit on editions as low as 1500.

Kevin Weldon, a maestro of book publishing in Australia, said that while the timing of Australiana now seems spot on, heritage was a risky business in 1977 when Ell embarked on that course.

His other great success was in taking early advantage of mail order, and increasing margins by appealing to subscribers. Serendipity also helped, such as when the AMP placed a huge order for a booklet he had produced on retirement, then not such a profitable field.

Ell's secretary of many years, Kathryn Lamberton, recalls the publication of Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture. A $10 advertisement in a Tasmanian National Trust magazine resulted in more than 100 orders at a generous direct mail discount. Ell was exuberant when the $139 cheques began arriving, and for weeks the Bollinger flowed and bowls of Beluga caviar were handed around.

Such uncontrolled expenditure and lavish living is probably responsible for the loss of Ell's share of the family fortunes and profits he made. At his funeral Lamberton read a report from Ell's housemaster at St Ignatius college to his parents:

"David ... does not seem to appreciate the value of money. He is usually one of the leaders in the rush for the extraordinary at the tuck shop. Without advocating stinginess in any way, I would ask you to speak to him on the necessity of spending a little more care and consideration for those who are making the great sacrifice to give him the best possible education for future life."

If Cyril Ell spoke to David about this, it went in one ear, out the other.

Ell’s first house was an Italian migrant builder’s cottage near the St Joseph’s school at Hunters Hill. He soon found the cottage was not big enough for him and the coterie of artists, collectors, curators and male companions he accumulated, and moved to a grander house in Wharf Road, Birchgrove.

There, Gatsby-like parties ate into book profits, but it was also the home for a while of one of Sydney’s finest chefs, Anders Ousback, whose career Ell helped to launch. Ell always employed the best decorators and even brought in an architect, Glenn Murcutt, to do a bathroom he wanted with a wavy wall.

Ell was hit hard by the recession of 1981 but survived to develop a large international business in children’s books, which he exhibited at overseas book fairs. The 1991 recession was a killer for his mortgage. He was forced to sell Wharf Road and move to a shack at Bundeena. A sale of his collection was held by Christie’s in 1993 and raised $73,000.

Bollinger and Beluga soon became beyond his reach. But he never complained about his downturn as he refined his interests to what he called ‘‘garaginalia’’, domestic handicraft work made from materials such as old tyres and chicken wire, still in people's garages.

As his old car belched its way down the street, Ell honking at anything, he resembled Toad of Toad Hall. He ended his days in a room in a pub and then distant outer suburban public housing.

Ell's struggle to come to terms with his religious upbringing and schooling was shown in his early support for Acceptance, a faith community supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics, their family and friends. He was disappointed by the Church's lack of it, but his funeral was a Catholic affair.