WHO: Meagan Durlak, 24, designer/illustrator (www.meagandurlak.com), and her three-legged cat, Walter.

WHAT: The second floor of a two-storey house near St. Clair West and Bathurst. 

THE STORY: Durlak’s apartment is like her own idiosyncratic museum. She refers to the display boxes that house her trinkets as her “cabinets of curiosity.” Durlak arranges and rearranges her objects according to a mysterious, internal logic — small colourfully painted Asian masks will be placed beside a menagerie of animal miniatures and a grouping of old wooden sewing spools. Durlak has the tendency to pick up anything that fascinates her and these treasures often inspire her work. “Before starting a new design I always take a walk through my apartment and notice something new,” says Durlak.

One of Durlak’s favourite pieces is an old mason jar turned into a lamp that she found at local Goodwill. She unscrewed the top and filled the jar with old buttons she had collected over the years and placed an astronaut figurine in the centre. Durlak confesses she has a thing for outer space.
Durlak also has a thing for retro children’s books, apparent in the Ladybird series that she stacks on top of a shelf. A lot of her own illustrations, which are also displayed on the shelf, are inspired from these books. The key, it seems, is to keep the images you love close together and they will breed.