Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties It appears to have been

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

who made everything from desk and smoking accessories to corkscrews to bookends to pretzel holders to candlesticks

the founder of Zen Buddhism

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

miniature really

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties It appears to have beenA 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