Collection of antique live traps for rats from the
Antique Mouse & Rat Trap Gallery.
Ingenious contraptions have a strange appeal as sculptural objects.
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| WANTED List. Including Bonanza Mouse Trap |
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| WANTED Royal No 1 Mouse Trap (1879) |
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| Cage style "Live traps" (more examples below) |
“I love the story of ‘Cinderella’ and how the fairy godmother transforms a pumpkin into a beautiful carriage and the mice and rats into horses to pull it,” Putsch said. [Mary Putsch of Janesville, Wis.] “I really like the illustrations, and that’s what brought me to mousetraps. “In my picture book, when Cinderella went to get these mice for her fairy godmother, they were in something that looked to me like a bird cage,” she said. It was, in fact, a live trap for mice."
“Having never seen anything except one of those flat, snap mousetraps, I couldn’t imagine how even a fairy godmother could make anything out of what was left in one of those.” While browsing an antique shop one day, Putsch noticed a bird cage-like device hanging from the ceiling. The tag on the item read “rat trap,” and Putsch instantly understood what the story and illustration in her Cinderella book was about. “So I had to buy that trap,” she said. Later, Putsch found the same trap — only smaller and designed to catch mice. “So I was off and running,” she said. A 20-year obsession was born."
[And I love the story of how these collections get started]
"There are 4,400-some patents on mousetraps. That’s more than any other single item.” Although Putsch has never counted her traps, she estimates she has at least 100 dating back to the 1800s. She’s found her treasures in antique shops and flea markets, had them given as gifts, bought them on trips abroad and even had a few made by her husband.
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