Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties 7" long x 1 7/8"

7" long x 1 7/8" in diameter

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

miniature really

complete with pencil-drawn outlines on the uncarved end

the founder of Zen Buddhism

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties 7" long x 1 7/8"A 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