Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties and also with a just-in

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

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

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

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

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties and also with a just-inA 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