Samuel Yellin

Personal collection of the artist

Thence by descent

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Joseph Cunningham, The Metalwork of Samuel Yellin, forthcoming, 2021, Volume I, figs. 3.63, 3.65-3.66 (for related candlesticks) and 3.64 (for a nearly identical model)

Important Works from the Personal Collection of Samuel Yellin

Significant works by Samuel Yellin from his personal cache of most-beloved objects have rarely been available to the public, having been carefully preserved and protected by his descendants in the eighty years since his death in 1940. A fine and varied set of these works from Yellin’s own collection is offered here for the first time.

Samuel Yellin was born in Mogilev in Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1884. Following the death of his father in the late nineteenth century, Yellin’s family fled anti-Semitism and resettled between about 1900 and 1905 in Philadelphia.

In the first years Yellin spent in Philadelphia, he quickly became a renowned teacher at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and built his business, particularly with breakthrough early clients from J. Pierpont Morgan Jr. to Otto Kahn and important commissions from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to the Wadsworth Atheneum.

In the two early candlesticks offered here we can see the brilliant range of Yellin’s more historicist impulses and his singular ability to rethink medieval style through a lens of bold modernism. Modernism is on full display in the elegant and charming andirons, which explore a range of symbolic motifs interpretable across time, place, and culture. The two “sketches in iron,” as Yellin sometimes called such works, were likely made during the period of the early 1930s when he used such explorations of the boundaries of what is possible in ironwork to challenge his best employees. Testing the limits of this difficult medium in the depths of the depression when commissions thinned, Yellin’s staff experimented widely with overall design, structure, various implementations of ornament and demonstrated their exceptional skills as artisans.

These lots stand on their own as superb exemplars of art by America’s most important ironworker, but taken together they offer a rare glimpse into Yellin’s keen awareness of historic forms, his unstoppable creativity, and unique ability to bring together tradition and innovation in the formative period from 1910 to 1940 when American art found its own vision.

An Important Candlestick from the Personal Collection of Samuel Yellin

From the time of his immigration to America from Ukraine around 1905 through the first years in his legendary Philadelphia atelier, Samuel Yellin used small tabletop forms, such as candlesticks, to explore the boundaries of his skills as a designer and craftsman. Whether reinterpreting historical forms or boldly composing new structures and ornamentation, these works show Yellin at his most creative.

Because candlesticks were often created for ecclesiastical settings and remain in the churches for which they were made, and few residential or corporate clients ever commissioned such works, they are very rare in today’s market. During his lifetime, Yellin retained a small set of exceptional examples, two of which are offered here to the public for the first time. These two examples were retained for over 100 years in the collection of Samuel Yellin Metalworkers but nearly no candlesticks now remain with the descendants of the ironworker. These are the last two candlesticks that will be offered by this owner.

Though some candlesticks Yellin retained for his personal collection at his offices were reproduced from particularly successful examples made for clients, the examples offered here are designs known only to have been made for specific use by their maker. Yellin presented works such as these regularly to allow clients to see structures and decoration that might be used or varied in commissions. The candlesticks present a fascinating microcosm of the genius of America’s great ironworker, wherein one can see complex ideas and novel embellishments skillfully synthesized within pleasing designs.

Large and bold among the candlesticks Yellin made for his own use, the work offered in lot 339 strikes a perfect balance between ancient forms and their modernist reinterpretation in the mind and hand of a master ironworker. An extant drawing for the work demonstrates the extreme care with which Yellin approached the work (figure 1). Dramatically arched legs are rooted at the feet with even-toed palmettes and hipped with animal faces (complete with ears, eyes, and snout) seamlessly integrated in the arc of the iron bars. The tapered hexagonal stem is elaborately incised with deep vertical stripes and bands of horizontal parallel lines and fastened into place atop the tripodal stand with a massive forge weld concealed below the joint. The hexagonal drip pan is a remarkable innovation known on no other forms from Samuel Yellin Metalworkers. The candle holder repeats the horizontal striations that visually connect back down to similar gestures on the shaft. The geometric sophistication of this candlestick is exemplified, for example, in the mapping of the six vertical stripes on the hexagonal facets of the shaft and the six ‘drips’ of shaped wire mimicking candlewax that punctuate the hexagonal pan above.

Yellin created just two examples of this form, one without the center spike for stabilizing the candle within the holder (in the collection of Leeds Art Foundation, Philadelphia) and the present model lot 339. When he composed a photograph commemorating some of his finest candlesticks, Yellin presented the model offered here; the void of white background in spaces in the candleholder indicate that the candle is standing on the spear, not within the holder (figure 2) Yellin frequently moved tabletop items around his offices at the Arch Street Forge and this candlestick can often be identified through various images in placements throughout the atelier. This candlestick was specifically documented in 1973 in an image created by Yellin’s son commemorating the candlesticks and other table top items that Yellin had retained in his personal “Museum” of his finest creations (photograph retained in the Samuel Yellin Metalworkers Archives) The version of this candlestick without the central spear will be illustrated in the forthcoming Metalwork of Samuel Yellin; Volume I, Chapter 3, which publication is expected in 2021.