Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties and then his head looks

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

miniature really

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

pretty classic

the founder of Zen Buddhism

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers kitties and then his head looksA 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