The 'Totem' standard lamp belongs to the ‘Colonnes’ (Columns) collection launched in 1961 by the recently founded S.C.M. (Société de Création de Modèles) and presented in 1962 at the Salon des Arts Ménagers. With this series Mouille aimed to accomplish a radical stylistic break with his previous career, dominated by the well-known ‘Black Forms’. Contrarily to his former creations, ‘Colonnes’ displays the rigid geometry of the urban and architectonic aesthetics of the 1960s and includes new industrial materials such as the fluorescent tube.