Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties complete with pencil-drawn outlines on

complete with pencil-drawn outlines on the uncarved end

I have not been able to find out for sure when or where the tradition of using oil cloth for dolls began

and then his head looks to be ceramic or composition over wood I would guess

the founder of Zen Buddhism

7" long x 1 7/8" in diameter

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties complete with pencil-drawn outlines onA little searching turns up that Italian marble pietra dura "specimen" rulers were a thing, popular in the late 1800s as Grand Tour souvenirs. This, however, is not that it appears to be to be all one piece of marble, with carved lines to delineate inches and the variations in color done with some sort of dye. I tend to like aspirational things imitating other things, but what I especially like about this one, which makes it quite singular, is that