Here’s a particularly ugly bit of home decor. It’s a caricature of Benito Mussolini, intended as an ashtray and manufactured by Bassons Dummy Products of New York City in 1942. There’s one of Adolf and Tojo as well which I shall cast the Eye of Sauron onto and track down.
This is the fourth one of a series of faux chamber pots put out by Fieldings of Staffordshire, England. On the front it says ‘Wop No. 1” and “Albania-Taranto-Bardia”. On the rear it says “We’ve got him on the run″. Inside is a cartoon image of Mussolini. The design is a tongue in cheek one executed by the outstanding designer Enoch Boulton. These pots were viewed as being a little bad taste at the time, especially the ultra-rare large one that rotated on a wooden base and played “Rule Britannia”. I truly wish I could find that one someday. The date of this piece is sometime between November and December 1940 since this is when Bardia fell to General Wavell and the Italian Fleet was torpedoed at Taranto. These Mussolini ones are much harder to find than the Hitler ones.
