42 C O N T E X T 1 3 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 5 Vox pop Chris Topp is managing director of Topp & Co. Who has been your greatest inspiration? Samuel Yellin. A Polish immigrant into the USA in the early part of the 20th century, he was a prolific designer of the most beautiful ‘gothic’ architectural ironwork for many prestigious new buildings in USA in the twenties and thirties. He eventually put together a considerable workshop extending at one time to over 200 craftsmen blacksmiths, many of whom were also immigrants from Eastern Europe. I guess he impresses me most because he also was bucking the trend toward austere design styles with some success – notwithstanding his incredible skill and inventiveness. Unfortunately, his crusade appears eventually to have petered out, the workshop shrank andYellin died in 1940 aged 55. What has been your best idea? Recycling wrought iron. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? Rich. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? I still say I’m a blacksmith, although in reality that’s some time ago. What is the biggest frustration in your job? I wish clients would trust us to design the work for them instead of having to correct their designs to get a quality job. What would you like to be doing in five years’ time? It would be nice to be alive, although nothing is taken for granted. Retired and rich I suppose. What is your favourite building? York Minster. Your favourite place? ConistonWater. What do you do in your spare time? I’m currently reconstructing a Thames sailing barge. What organisations are you a member of? The NHIG, Art Workers’ Guild, INTBAU, BABA, National Trust, Green Party, NorthYorks Flying Club, Sailing Barge Association and some others. The membership of associations such as HHA, SPAB and IHBC is vested in the company. Which one issue would you particularly like the IHBC to campaign on? Standards of quality in craftsmanship – particularly, of course, ironwork. A sample iron grille section by the Polish-born American master blacksmith and designer SamuelYellin (1885–1940) made in 1935, LACMA (promised gift) (Photo:WmpearlWikiCommons) ‘There is only one way to make good decorative ironwork and that is with the hammer at the anvil, for in the heat of creation and under the spell of the hammer, the whole conception of a composition is often transformed. ‘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.’ Samuel Yellin
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