DECORATIVE WROUGHT IRON 
An Appreciation of Home of the Modern Work Designed by 
American Architects and Executed by American Craftsmen 
GILES EDGERTOX 
J UST a little way beyond Heidelberg you 
come to that famous and absurd little 
rivulet called the Tauber, a narrow stream 
meandering with gentle dignity through 
primitive Bavarian villages. And on the 
banks of this stream, every few 
miles, a little group of crouching 
gray houses with their gay 
flowering roofs circle about a 
tiny church with a tall severe 
steeple. 
But in these old and somber 
lonely churches are many things 
besides fervid preachers and 
devout worshippers. In the 
windows, for instance, are often 
the finest bits of old stained 
glass, deep wine red and sap¬ 
phire blue and clear rose, as 
beautifully patterned and col¬ 
ored as the Rose Window in the 
great Strassburg Cathedral. And 
often, too, the light from the 
glowing glass streams down over 
altars of startling beauty, carved 
in the glory of Bavarian mediae¬ 
val art—as for instance the 
altar of the great Reimen- 
schneider at Detwang in that 
forlorn, tiny church of the 
neglected little village, to reach 
which you cross the splendid 
12 th Century bridge over which 
crusading knights passed out of 
view, wearing the colors of the 
sad ladies left behind. 
There are twelve gates to this 
ancient city of Rothenburg, and 
by every gate is a special tower 
and up the old stone stairways 
of each tower you pass from 
time to time the most wonderful 
wrought iron grilles of the most 
famous Bavarian craftsmen. 
And also in this 12 th Century 
city every house of any preten¬ 
sion has the most delicate, lace¬ 
like grilles of iron that make us 
think of Maurice Hewlett’s 
ladies with their eyes like doves, and their 
fragile bodies like old Nuremburg Madon¬ 
nas. There are also oriel windows on the 
corners of some of the oldest houses in 
Rothenburg, and there are rich and ornate 
wrought iron grilles in these projecting 
windows. There is a delightful story about 
these oriels which invariably are the homes 
of the bakers, or have been inherited from 
baker ancestors. 
It seems that many years ago 
when the French were trying to 
invade Rothenburg the bakers 
at night, preparing the morning 
loaves and rolls, heard the 
shoveling and pounding of the 
invading army in their effort 
to dig an underground passage. 
And because the bakers saved 
their town, the greatest honor 
was given them—that of the 
use of the oriel window with a 
wrought iron grille. 
Since then the history of 
wrought iron has kept pace with 
every famous development in 
architecture; magnificently in 
Italy, with quaint picturesque¬ 
ness in Spain, with lace-like 
beaut}' in France, more robustly 
in England; and now its Western 
course has brought it to 
America, first of all to the 
Southeast down in Matanzas 
in Cuba. This, of course, is a 
direct inheritance from Spain. 
One would know that, without 
tracing the history, because the 
designs, simple and exquisitely 
fine, are the traceries one re¬ 
members in the stone carving 
of Arabia, India and Algiers. In 
these wonderful old plaster 
houses at Matanzas windows 
are completely hidden under 
the frosty, fine grilles. Even 
the great half circle windows 
under the plaster arches carry 
their web-like drawn wire 
grilles, and the railings down 
the tattered old stairways and 
in front of the narrow porches 
are magnificent specimens of 
old iron work. And all the 
An unusual effect, almost the effect of stained glass , is given this entrance 
door by the bird in wrought and repousse iron. II. T. Lindeberg was 
the architect and Samuel Yellin , of Philadelphia, was the craftsman 
