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  Samuel Yellin

 

Samuel Yellin

 

While this site focuses on handwrought silver and gold, Arts & Crafts metalsmiths also worked in copper, brass, aluminum, and iron.  The best known 20th Century decorative iron work was done by Samuel Yellin.  His firm, Samuel Yellin Metalworkers, is still in operation today (see samuelyellin.com).  As with most other American Arts & Crafts metalsmiths, Yellin rebelled against the sameness of mass-production, and tried to create things by hand that were both useful and beautiful.  In a speech to the Architectural Club of Chicago, in Chicago in 1926, Yellin said:

 

"I am a staunch advocate of tradition in the matter of design. I think that we should follow the lead of the past masters and seek our inspiration from their wonderful work. They saw the poetry and rhythm of iron. Out of it they made masterpieces not for a day or an hour but for the ages. We should go back to them for our ideas in craftsmanship, to their simplicity and truthfulness. The superficial and the tricky, which are spreading over the world of art like a disease, doom themselves to destruction. The beautiful can never die.

 

"Throughout my life I have been striving to teach people the love of beautiful things. There is no reason why people in the United States should fancy that we cannot do beautiful things here, because we can. Only America has been used to accepting the superficial, that the workers turn it out in bulk."

 

(The full speech can be found at the Skipjack Press site.)

 

Yellin was born in 1885 in Poland, where he apprenticed as an iron worker.  He moved to Philadelphia in 1906, and taught metalworking at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts.  In 1909 he opened a studio in Philadelphia, and soon had over 200 craftspeople working for him.  (For more information, see nyc-architecture.com.)

 

The two articles below, both from The American Magazine of Art, provide interesting examples of his craft.  The first, from May, 1916, showcases some of his earlier work.  The second, published exactly ten years later, was written when Yellin received the Edward W. Bok Philadelphia Award. 

 

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

 

Samuel Yellin article

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