On eBay this week is a vintage Olde Thompson Salt Box in the Imperial Ivy design. The ivy design was also featured on the Olde Thompson cruet seen on I Love Lucy. The Ivy salt box was not seen on the show but there was an Olde Thompson salt box in the same shape on the wall near the kitchen sink.
If you ever wanted to create a touch of I Love Lucy style in your home this could be it! The Delphia Jasmine Trellis Floral Wallpaper by Brewster Home Fashions available from Wayfair is the best match I’ve seen for the Ricardo’s bedroom wallpaper. Just one wall behind the beds was papered in this iconic floral trellis design.
The Delphia Jasmine floral pattern is an almost exact match for the original. 
It is available in a four different colorways and still works today with contemporary home decor. Wayfair are selling directly on eBay. CLICK HERE to see it on eBay.
CLICK HERE for a selection on Amazon
Related Post :http://www.50slucy.com/the-ricardos-bedroom-furniture-digital-decor-experiment.html
In the I Love Lucy episode Don Juan and the Starlets Ricky is seen holding an interesting metal waste basket. It is decorated with an antique song sheet.
There was an identical trash can on Etsy recently as pictured below. You can see more pictures of it on the Etsy listing.
See it at Etsy (US)
The sheet music is reproduced from an original copper plate print by engraver George Bickham. The sheet of music entitled “To Chloe” (#63) is from The Musical Entertainer circa 1737 and 1739
An exerpt from George Bickham’s “To Chloe” from the publication The Musical Entertainer
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Vintage prints of the 1922 Utrillo picture seen on I Love Lucy seem to be quite rare. There is one on offer online CLICK HERE to see it – still available as of Oct 9 2015 – I don’t know the size.
Read more about the picture in my previous post:
http://www.50slucy.com/i-love-lucy-prop-utrillo-painting-print.html
Lucy Ricardo’s coffee grinder can be seen in various locations in the kitchen throughout the I Love Lucy series. In the early episodes it is easily spotted on the kitchen shelf. Lucy’s coffee mill is a wooden hand cranked grinder with an ivy design on the front. I came across one just like it pictured below. The ivy decal appears to be hand painted. The wooden box has a 4.25″ square base and curved corners and the drawer has a distinctive metal handle, the knob on the crank arm is an inverted teardrop shape. I have searched extensively for an ID of the maker. One would assume this is an ordinary coffee mill much like any other but when you begin searching the subtle differences stand out. Some of the vintage European made wooden coffee mills look similar but only one I have come across matches well.
The only make I have found up to now that fits the form factor, measurements and shape of the components is the B.O. Garantie square Wooden Coffee Grinder that was made in Czechoslovakia until production ceased when the company was taken over by the state in 1950. They may have been imported and sold under a US brand but I have no information on that as yet. Below is a page from a vintage catalog showing some of the products of the B.O. Garantie firm. However I have not seen one with an ivy design in any of the old catalog pages I found online.
The B.O. Garantie firm has reopened in recent years under the name Lodos and they still produce coffee grinders today.
Vintage shabby B.O. Garantie coffee grinders can occasionally be found online. If you are a DIY enthusiast it should be easy enough to strip the paint from an old shabby one and and restore it to look like Lucy’s coffee grinder. [ For paint removal on any vintage item I recommend a safe paint stripper that can render inert any leaded paint layers for safe disposal (Lead Out™ Paint Stripper is highly recommended ).] Look for one that has no dovetail on the front seams, which you can tell by the vertical straight lines that appear on each side through the worn paint as seen in the picture to the right. (if it were dovetailed the square shapes would be seen). To restore the metal parts see the handy link below in the reference section.
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Lucille Ball loved her pet poodles. Her personally owned poodle figurines pictured above were sold by Heritage Auctions. The figurines are called Spaghetti Poodles and were popular collectibles in the 1950’s and can still be found on eBay. Below is a set just like the pink spaghetti poodles in Lucille’s collection followed by a white one also like Lucy’s and they are currently available on ebay.
Click Here to see them on eBay
Click HERE to see it on eBay
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In the I Love Lucy episode LA at Last there is an Asian themed figural table lamp in the bedroom of their LA hotel suite. I saw a lamp base just like it on eBay.
In a hilarious scene from the I Love Lucy episode LA at Last Lucy finds a novel use for a cup of coffee. The cup and saucer are square shaped and the cup handle forms a distinctive ear shaped curve. We now have an ID for the coffee cup thanks to a generous contributor to this blog.
The coffee cups and saucers seen on the show are by Franciscan Ware ( a trade mark of Gladding, McBean & Co ). The Franciscan Tiempo single color line was produced from 1949 – 1954. It featured a squared shape and came in several colors including apricot, yellow,white,grey, lime green, olive green, brown and tan.
This design first appeared in the 1940 Metropolitan range that used a two color pattern by Franciscan Ware designed by Morris B. Sanders in 1940 as an entry for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts 1940 Exhibition of Contemporary American Industrial Arts, and was one of the first “square” dinner sets
The Metropolitan range were colored white inside the cups. The single color design called Tiempo appeared in 1948/49.
[phpbay keywords=”Franciscan Tiempo cup saucer” num=”2″ siteid=”1″ sortorder=”BestMatch” templatename=”columns”]
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