Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties miniature really

miniature really

It appears to have been hand-painted and additionally features very fine incising on each of the small "petals" that surround the repeating circular forms with black dots

It is signed on the bottom with what looks to read Salley or Selley

with her face reminding me rather of the sculptural women of Gaston Lachaise

and also with a just-in matte green arts and crafts vase

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties miniature reallyA 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