Samuel Yellin of Philadelphia was a major figure in the early-twentieth-century Arts and Crafts movement, a master of his métier and a versatile and prolific designer of decorative ironwork. The company he founded in 1909, Samuel Yellin Metalworkers, is still in family hands.

A long association with the Metropolitan Museum began in the 1930s, when Yellin supplied medieval-style railings, grilles, gates, and other hardware for The Cloisters, then under construction. After the artist's death the Museum purchased numerous pieces of European metalwork from his collection (acc. nos. 55.61.1–.170), and in 1957 his son, Harvey, restored and installed the Museum's monumental choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, Spain (acc. no. 56.234.1).

The Metropolitan also acquired a small but choice selection of Yellin's architectural wrought iron from important New York commissions, including prototype grilles for the Equitable Trust Company (1926) and Pierpont Morgan Library Annex (1928) (acc. nos. 1994.599.1,.2), a gift from the Yellin family. The repoussé door here—one of only two narrative doors Yellin designed in iron—attests to the extraordinary craftsmanship for which his studio was known. The effortless charm of seventeen vignettes illustrating the book arts, probably executed by an Austrian artist known only as Mr. Winze, belie the technical challenge of working this recalcitrant material.