INSPIRATION: An old rat cage and IV stand
TRANSLATION: Take the letters in “rat,” shake ’em up, and you can end up with “art.” Perhaps that’s how Paul Munro got the idea to turn a vintage rat cage — the kind you would find in a science lab — into a storage system for his art supplies. Or maybe he just likes the institutional look, considering that in his Rogers Park apartment, he also uses a 1920s IV stand as the base of a lamp.
Munro lives and works in his three-bedroom apartment, painting and decoupaging maple bowls, plates and wall hangings. The 51/2-foot-square cage holds 38 wire mesh bins that slide in and out from either side. Munro found it “years ago, for about $100” at a now-shuttered antiques store in Wicker Park. “It’s on wheels, which was one of the things that appealed to me,” he says. “At one point, I used it as a giant room divider and filled it with tea candles. I’ve taken out the bins and nailed them to the wall or used them as separate storage bins in other parts of the apartment.”
Munro got hooked up with the IV stand via barter at a Geneva kitchen showroom called Past Basket. “They were using it as a prop for displaying flowers,” he says. “I exchanged it for a work of mine.”
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