In the Season three episode “Ricky Loses His Temper” Lucy tries to provoke Ricky by turning on the radio at 4:00 am when he is trying to sleep and follows up by cracking nuts with a mallet in a wooden bowl to make even more noise.
The wooden bowl pictured below looks just like the one Lucy has and is vintage from the same era. The bowl came with the matching mallet and has a label underneath marked Standard Specialty Company, San Francisco, Products of The California Redwood Forests