The entrance to Filling and Emptying is flanked by vignettes of cast-iron objects set into marble-lined niches. Merrill Mason collected perfume bottles, lace-edged and embroidered linens, gloves, lipsticks, hand mirrors, and hair combs and re-created them in iron, replacing the tactile qualities of these intimate items with an unyielding permanence appropriate for their public placement. The interior of the washroom furthers the concept of a woman’s private room for dressing, contemplation, and ritualized preparation with additional iron still lifes and photographs of a woman seated at a vanity holding Mason’s sculptures. The tiled walls are embossed with historical French, English, and American monograms, both an abstraction of identity and symbols of propriety. Mason created these tiles as well as lavatories and toilet bowls at the Kohler Co. Pottery. Text in the toilet bowls refers to the flow of water: “filling and emptying” and “swirling, swirling, around and around and down.” Mason’s room offers quiet contemplation of the boundaries between public and private through personal objects and procedures that prepare one for public presentation.