Josef Hoffmann was a leader of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), a community of artists dedicated to creating affordable objects. Reacting against art academies which called for copies of historical works, Hoffmann and his workshop adapted motifs from the past into objects for the present. Among his best known designs are a group of metal objects, like this one, based on ornamental forms, such as fluted columns, found in ancient Greece and Persia.