Lamp stands with a fitted lamp at the top first appeared in Iran in the period 1500-1600. They are often inscribed with verses that refer to their function. One line on the base of this example reads, 'Like a moth, my main concern is with the candle, since, if I move towards it, it burns my wings’.

Around 1550 a new type of brassware with fine, engraved decoration emerged in Iran. It featured stylised plants and other ornament shown, as here, in relief against a hatched ground, originally filled with a black compound. The decoration was often arranged in bands or cartouches that matched the shape of the object. Poetic inscriptions in the elegant ‘nasta’liq’ style of Persian calligraphy were also common. Human and animal motifs, absent since before 1400, reappeared.