Hollywood Boulevard: Trinket hunt yields conversation-starters

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Interior designer Frances Merrill was charged with finding home decor bargains and surprises in Los Angeles’ Thai Town. Merrill scores some great finds... (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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A canister of jasmine tea ($4.99) from Silom Supermarket was recycled as a cool little pencil caddy. And as proof that even the souvenir shops full of fake Oscar trophies and tacky refrigerator magnets can be destinations for tidbits of chic: An I-heart-L.A. pencil ($1.99) from Hollywood Mega, and the California ashtray (used as a catch-all, $8.99) from Souvenirs of Hollywood. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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After college, Frances Merrill worked as an apprentice at the Thai Silk Co, the business founded in 1948 by her great-great-uncle, Jim Thompson, known for bringing colorfast Thai silks to the U.S. in the 1950s and ‘60s. Many credit Thompson for saving the silk industry in Thailand, and to this day Merrill can pull Jim Thompson Fabric samples at the Pacific Design Center and recall the Thai factory where she apprenticed — the scent of mulberry, the sight of worms spinning raw silk. For this vignette, she used a vintage Thai runner from Phukaw ($75) as decorative bedding. The California flag ($15.99) was from Souvenirs of Hollywood, and a colorful Thai necklace ($65) from Phukaw hangs to the right as wall decoration. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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A close-up of the runner used decoratively on the bed. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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The huge brass pan from Silom Supermarket ($145.95) has oversize handles with great lines that suggest an antique that cost hundreds more. The checkered runner ($33) was from Phukaw. The woven basket ($22) and the Kenyan soapstone candlesticks ($42 for the pair) were from a great find, Abyssinia Gifts From Africa. Cute, tiny ceramic cups ($2.99 for 12) were from Silom, and for a touch of retro fun: a blue-and-white California plate ($16.99) from Hollywood Mega. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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A closer look at the Kenyan soapstone candlesticks. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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The corner of a kid’s room gets some eclectic additions: The strand of artificial marigolds ($39.95) from Silom and a Ghanaian hand percussion instrument ($20) from Abyssinia that Merrill thought her 4-year-old daughter would love. The antique toy tug boat? It was just $15 from Vintage Vortex V. The Three Stooges cardboard cut-out ($41.99) was from Souvenirs of Hollywood. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

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Glass bottles of club soda ($3.16 for four) from Silom are inexpensive conversation starters. A kitschy tequila double-shot glass ($8.99) from Hollywood Mega gets repurposed as a vase, and an amusingly “crummy” bar towel ($3.99) from Hollywood Mega is a cheap laugh. Not shown: boba straws ($0.99 for a set) from Silom. (Bethany Mollenkof / Los Angeles Times)

By Lizzie Garrett Mettler

March 8, 2013 10 AM PT

Interior designer Frances Merrill steps inside Phukaw, a new import shop chock-full of traditional Thai home goods, apparel and vintage textiles. It’s one of those inexplicable Hollywood Boulevard juxtapositions — authentic design from Thailand’s northern hill tribes, adjacent to Jumbo’s Clown Room, the pole-dancing club where Courtney Love worked. Merrill grabs a roll of indigo-colored embroidered fabric, a handmade necklace and hair fob to be repurposed as room decoration, and a gingham towel.

A few blocks west, in the Silom Supermarket that serves as the anchor to Los Angeles’ Thai Town, the designer smiles at a wall of jasmine tea tins, glossy and graphic. She puts one in her cart. She discovers a 22-inch brass Thai cooking pan and envisions it as a dining table centerpiece. She spots artificial marigolds strung like golden garlands and imagines them atop a tepee in her daughter’s room.

Playing tourist gives Merrill a rush, so after a lunch of larb and pad kee mao (spicy pan-fried noodles) at Red Corner Asia, she heads farther west, deep into Walk of Fame territory on Hollywood Boulevard. A man on the street hawks a tour of the neighborhood.

PHOTOS: Home decor trinket hunt in Thai Town

“Sorry, I live here,” says Merrill, who got her start working for the hip L.A. design firm Commune and has since launched her own company, Reath.

The tour salesman looks at her incredulously, as though he never had encountered a local on Hollywood Boulevard before. Maybe he hadn’t. Indeed, it’s so rare for Los Angeles residents to shop this street that many may not know what they’re missing.

That was our challenge to the designer: Browse the trinket shops of Thai Town and the souvenir emporiums that flow forth along one of L.A.’s biggest tourist traps and find objects of genuine beauty. Look for budget buys that could be used in amusing ways. Surprise us. Here’s a look at what Merrill found during one recent excursion.

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Hollywood Boulevard: Trinket hunt yields conversation-starters

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