This beautiful grille is just outside the gift shop and the cafe on the first floor of the museum, just chillin’. It gets natural light from an overhead window and really has pride of place where it is. The design itself is very simple, skewing toward Bauhaus-inspired modernism before there was such a thing, and well-worn, as you can clearly see from the bits that have come off over the years.
The designs of the 1890’s were often about form over function, but in this case, they were pretty evenly matched. The artistic balances well with the functionality and practicality in a way that is attractive and informal rather than stilted and classist.