A fourth-generation silversmith, John Prip trained in his family’s native Denmark before returning to the U.S. in 1948 to teach metalwork at the School for American Craftsmen. Like many postwar craft artisans, he also ventured into the commercial world, co-founding a craft gallery and designing products for Reed and Barton. His early work combined technical skill and innovation with an aesthetic influenced by modern Danish design, whose sleek, unadorned surfaces and organic shapes were popular in the U.S. at midcentury. Prip eventually shifted away from this style toward more experimental and geometric forms, as the spheres and cubes of this candlestick suggest.