Baby Shower: 1960

I love the beige wood in the coffee table. Anybody guess what it is? Some type of maple or birch? My parents have a small desk in that same wood, and it extends out into a very long table. We sometimes used it when we had a lot of people over for a dinner party.

Oh joy, a laundry cart! Just what every woman wants!

Great looking shoes.

"Put that camera down and let me go take a nap!"

I saw first of all the dress because I also was expecting a child in 1959 and had a dress like that (same color) and a fireplace like that and a shower like that -- way too eerie for words! I did not have a black panther!

I think what we have here is an early color TV, which used round CRTs well into the 1960s, like our 1965 model. Round B/W CRTs were on the way out by the early 1950s. It looks like the logo above the screen reads "PHILCO," who began producing color sets in 1956. If my surmise is correct, this was a rare family, perhaps one of those whose living rooms were invaded by friends and neighbors every Sunday night starting this year to watch "Bonanza" in Living Color.

Your Grandma was beautiful. What a lovely expression.

That's definitely a ceramic panther. My grandmother had one except hers was a lamp base with...wait for it...a plastic philodendron entwining the bottom. This wasn't her handiwork - it came from the store that way and was intended to give the impression that the stealthy cat was prowling the leafy undergrowth of the jungle. This lamp was placed in the most prominent place in the room: on top of the TV. Why one needs a lamp on a TV, I don't know.

[Hugely collectible. Search on eBay for "TV lamp" -- there are hundreds. Including 16 panther TV lamps. Also a website devoted to them, tvlamps.net - Dave]

I'm guessing this was taken just after her baby shower. The item on the table looks to be a ceramic panther. The blue thing maybe a stuffed Humpty Dumpty. The gifts seem geared toward the coming baby, including the laundry cart for dirty cloth diapers.

[Hmm. Could that be why the title of this post is "Baby Shower"? - Dave]

It looks to be a statue of a black panther; they're often pictured slinking around like that. My mom had one eerily similar to your grandma's that was also kept on a table. In fact, before I read the text, the statue was the first thing that caught my eye. Although panther statues like this are common, I'd bet my mom's and your grandma's are the very same.

The big black thing on the table is a ceramic black panther. The view is a little odd, but, its head is looking towards your grandmother and father-to-be while its tail is pointing at the photographer.

The thing on Gramma's coffee table looks like a fabulous fifties tchotchke, a ceramic panther planter. (Addendum: In the six minutes it took me to find the panther photo on eBay, six people beat me to the answer! Not to mention the dozens who are sure to follow.)

Panther... ceramic, glossy glaze...popular in the 50's

I think that thing on the table might be a ceramic black leopard. My Mom used to have one of those on her front room coffee table....

My guess is that "the black thing" is a glossy-black ceramic panther (I'm guessing the face end would have a few painted-on features in white or gilt), based on the "midcentury" stuff I grew up with (I'm a bit older than your father).

BTW, someone has a vintage "Cal-Dak" laundry cart on eBay (ah, the wonders of the internet).

Nice to have a (comparatively) younger Shorpy submitter--welcome!

Looks like a ceramic cat (or perhaps a panther?).

And that TV looks older than the photo year. My parents bought our first TV (a tabletop Magnavox) in 1954 and the screen was larger and more square than the one shown.

I'm pretty sure the blue thing is a toy stuffed Humpty Dumpty and the black thing is a glass figurine - looks like a panther.

Dare I say, that black object looks like a figure of a panther. Now a cliche, then an object of pride?