Ellis moved from the Scottish Highlands to Glasgow in 2010 to take up a place on an art foundation course. She initially applied with an intent to study sculpture or painting, but discovered jewellery and fell in love with its’ potential. For Ellis, jewellery encompassed a little bit of everything; she could collage and paint in design sketchbooks, before moving into small scale three-dimensional ''sculpture'', through creating jewellery.

Ellis then went on to learn technical skills through a BA in Jewellery & Silversmithing at The Glasgow School of Art, before moving to London in 2015, to study for a Masters in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins. Ellis launched her brand in 2018, with a desire to create jewellery inspired by her heritage, a belief in the beauty of imperfections, hand craftsmanship and to provide clients with jewellery to be handed down the generations.

The jeweller Ellis Mhairi Cameron has always been captivated by the Scottish rural landscape in which she grew up. The scudding, ever-changing skies and eroding land had worked their way into her previous collections even before last year, when she discovered a five-century-old treasure hoard on her family’s ancient farm.

The Cameron clan has lived on the same site in Oban, the unofficial capital of the West Highlands, since 1502. Cameron grew up with her parents nearby and spent much of her childhood running in and out of the farm. In 2022, a set of standing stones was uncovered when an area of long-overgrown land was cleared. Historic Environment Scotland confirmed them to be significant and suggested that the family hire some metal detectors. So, on a rainy day in April, Cameron and two detectorists struck, if not gold, then certainly a rich vein of history: ancient artefacts that have gone on to inspire Legacy, Cameron’s latest collection of fine jewellery.