Northern Exposures -- This Log Home's Ambiance Relies On The Careful Arrangement Of Things From The Past

THIRTY-FIVE MILES FROM SEATTLE, AT THE TOP of a steep, crater-filled drive, stands a monument to one man's passion for the past.

DeWelle F. Ellsworth III - "Skip" to all who know him - has dedicated much of his 50-odd years to gathering the flotsam and jetsam of days gone by. Three years ago, he built a repository for his collection: a 6,500-square-foot log home on 40 acres in Monroe.

The lodgelike structure is filled to overflowing with the exotic and the ephemeral. Toys, jugs, duck decoys, banjos, pipes and spittoons jostle for space alongside quilts and one-of-a-kind carvings. Pieces crowd the tabletops and floors, adorn every inch of wall space and hang from the rafters overhead. "If there's ever an earthquake," observes Ellsworth, "I'm in serious trouble here."

And while some people hang horseshoes over their front door, Ellsworth chose to hang an entire sleigh. He placed a 140-year-old buggy beside it for good measure.

It's no wonder the production company filming the CBS series "Northern Exposure" chose Ellsworth's house as the home of eccentric town father Maurice Minnifield.

The home looks somewhat ominous from the front, its imposing, three-story facade punctuated by just two small windows.

Those invited into Ellsworth's inner sanctum encounter a 40-foot-high space adorned with a staggering array of animal trophies. All but two were shot by Ellsworth using a bow and arrow. Scores of knives and daggers - the oldest dating to around 1750 - are embedded in the log walls among rows of rifles. Ledges lining the second- and third-floor balconies overhead are filled with gramophones, spinning wheels and butter churns.

Although Ellsworth has outfitted the house with Victorian furniture, the pieces mostly serve as a foil for the objects around them. In many cases, chairs are just props used to support an array of animal bones or World War II newspapers. In the living room, a table is topped with carved wood clubs, an assortment of clocks and animal horns. Across the room, a copy of "Frank Leslie's Illustrated History of the Civil War" rests on a rolltop desk supporting a folk-art figure and an assortment of folding rulers, calipers and weights.

A display case alongside the TV contains a solid ivory globe the size of a cueball, with the continents etched in scrimshaw on its surface. Next to it stands an ivory carving of a hand holding a skull - probably the work of a long-forgotten sailor. Ellsworth has so many model ships sculpted from ivory that he has to keep the extras in cardboard boxes under the television. He plans to remedy the situation soon by adding a 3,000-square-foot study onto the back of the house.

ELLSWORTH WASN'T ALWAYS an avid collector. Born in the Chicago area, he grew up on an Indian reservation in Northern Minnesota, where his father operated a secondhand store.

Unlike most collectors, he doesn't focus on a single type of item at a time. Instead, he haunts antique stores from here to Ohio looking for objects that speak to him. "I'm looking for things I can relate to, feel comfortable with, make a statement with - regarding craftsmanship, art, beauty, function and effectivity," he explains.

Hoisting a carved wood object in his hand, Ellsworth says, "I bet I could relate more to the guy who carved this war club than the average guy you meet in Bellevue."

The collector says that value has never been an issue with him. "That isn't to say that if I got the chance to buy a Picasso for $20, I wouldn't do it," he avers. "But investment wasn't the idea here."

Although Ellsworth lives by himself, he's rarely alone. He entertains friends around the kitchen table nearly every morning.

The kitchen is outfitted with cooking implements of every stripe, from vintage toasters (three dozen of them) to coffee mills. Gadgets hang from the rafters overhead. Although Ellsworth says he's not much for cooking, he still likes cookbooks, claiming a collection of nearly 300 titles.

A shelf of German steins spans the length of the adjoining dining room, furnished by Ellsworth with a 24-foot-long table that he built in place. The homeowner keeps the table set at all times, with a different teacup and hunting knife at each of the 22 place settings.

The library upstairs features a pool table surrounded by collections of cast-iron log cabins, masks, and an assortment of guitars. A plaque labeled "mother" marks the guest room set aside for Ellsworth's mom, who visits regularly. A window overlooking the entry allows her to contemplate the gaze of a Bengal tiger from her bed.

The bedroom down the hall has been declared the "Americana" room, for the assortment of tools decorating the walls and ceiling. ("Taming-the-West kind of stuff," Ellsworth calls it.) Old irons, some dating to the time of the Pilgrims, line both sides of the stairs leading to the third-floor guest rooms.

ALTHOUGH OBJECTS WOULD appear to be randomly strewn around the house, their placement is actually the result of serious deliberation. An admirer of Asian philosophy, Ellsworth subscribes to the principles of feng shui, the Chinese art of placement.

"Feng shui has to do with the way that everything relates to everything else," says Ellsworth. "Everything has a place, and everything is in balance relative to the room and the other things in it." A wall sconce on the stairs, for instance, casts a shadow parallel to the line of the banister. Curios on one side of a tabletop are aligned to reflect the height of the objects on the other side of the tabletop.

After establishing that harmonious relationship, Ellsworth doesn't tinker with it. "Once I put something someplace, it's cast in stone," he says.

Ellsworth's interest in Asian philosophy stems from his friendship with his former martial-arts instructor. The two met at a martial-arts club in Seattle and remained close friends for 14 years, even rooming together for a time. The teacher was Bruce Lee.

Mementoes of Ellsworth's association with the kung-fu master and Hollywood star fill the TV room of his house. A poster on the wall, taken in conjunction with a kung-fu demonstration on local TV, shows Ellsworth standing next to Lee and his other early students. Next to it hangs Ellsworth's gi, or martial-arts robe, complete with black sash. Books about his mentor, written by his friends, rest on the coffee table alongside a film script for a movie about Lee's life, which will feature an actor playing Ellsworth.

Just as Bruce Lee was instrumental in popularizing martial arts in this country, Skip Ellsworth is doing all he can to spread the gospel of log houses. President of the Log House Builders Association of North America for the past six years, Ellsworth teaches a class on building log houses for the University of Washington's Experimental College.

"There's nothing in a log home that can't be done by a single person with hand tools," says the fifth-generation log-house builder. "It's not how many people you have, it's the technique you use. Physical strength is not important. We have 100-pound women in classes and they build beautiful log homes all by themselves."

Ellsworth has a stack of testimonials a foot high from former students who have built homes for anywhere from $3,000 on up. He says it's not uncommon to build a finished log home, complete with plumbing and electricity, for under $20,000. The average price hovers around $9 to $10 a square foot. The secret, Ellsworth says, lies in shopping. He teaches his students how to acquire used timbers through want ads and obtain unwanted trees from builders and homeowners clearing their property.

It took Ellsworth just 4 1/2 months to build his own house, working largely on his own and without the benefit of cranes to lift the massive Douglas fir poles into place. He obtained the logs from some land he sold off for a Street of Dreams development in Redmond. The home's 3-by-6-inch fir floorboards were salvaged from a Mukilteo warehouse. Altogether, the home cost Ellsworth $45,000 to build.

"People say, `Isn't it a lot of work to build a log home?' And I say, `No, what takes a lot of work is a 30-year mortgage.' "

SEATTLE WRITER FRED ALBERT REPORTS REGULARLY ON HOME DESIGN FOR PACIFIC, AND IS CO-AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN DESIGN: THE NORTHWEST," PUBLISHED BY BANTAM. MIKE SIEGEL IS A SEATTLE TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER.