Background
Yellin was born on March 2, 1885 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine, the oldest of four children of Jewish parents, Zacharias and Kate (Weintraub) Yellin. His father was a lawyer.
craftsman blacksmith decorative metal designer
Yellin was born on March 2, 1885 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine, the oldest of four children of Jewish parents, Zacharias and Kate (Weintraub) Yellin. His father was a lawyer.
Young Yellin showed signs of artistic ability as early as the age of eleven and began studying art. After staying on in Europe to complete his apprenticeship to an ornamental iron worker, he joined his mother and two sisters in the United States. Settling in Philadelphia, he enrolled in the newly instituted classes in metal work at the School of Industrial Art of the Pennsylvania Museum.
Yellin was quickly put in charge of the forge and was later made an instructor in wrought-iron work and taught for several years. This early and intimate experience with the manual fabrication of iron stood him in good stead in his later private practice as designer and executor of decorative metal work. Also, his experience as an instructor made him unusually articulate about his own theories and methods, extending his influence upon other designers in the field more widely than would have been possible by example alone.
Yellin was one of the leaders and initiators of the revival of the art of decorative metal work during the second half of the nineteenth century. Setting up a shop of his own in 1909, he built up a group of craftsmen which came eventually to number over 200. Among his more important works are his hand-wrought fixtures and gratings in the Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the crested gates of the Harkness Memorial Quadrangle at Yale University, and decorations for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and for the Cunard and Federal Reserve Bank buildings in New York City. His wrought-iron designs also include those for the National Cathedral at Washington, D. C. , Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, the W. K. Vanderbilt estate at Northport, Long Island, the Hall of Fame, New York City, and the Singing Tower or carillon built near Lake Wales, Florida, by Edward Bok. Yellin's largest single commission was a pair of massive gates for the Packard Building in Philadelphia.
The bulk of Yellin's work was done during the 1920's and 1930's and reflected the contemporary trends toward "modern" expression in architecture as well as in its decorative accompaniments. To many, however, the most marked characteristic of his work was his insistence upon the honest craft quality of his medium, an insistence which was not easy to maintain in the face of continually expanding mechanical fabricating processes which were having their effect upon all forms of structural and industrial design.
His faith in the decorative iron designer as a sculptor rather than a machinist gave heart and direction to his many followers, although there were those who found his work more reminiscent of the Renaissance than of the "International" school which was coming into fashion. Yellin was the author of the section on "Iron in Art" of the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and of many other articles on his craft. A man of easy loquaciousness and great energy, he charmed his associates and clients as much by his personality as by his work. His home was at Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, but he had a studio in New York City, and it was there that he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five.
Yellin was a member of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the T Square Club, a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, as well as a member of the Architectural League of New York.
On December 25, 1913, Yellin married Leah Josephs of Philadelphia, by whom he had two children.