Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers folk art cake and in the other one

and in the other one larger

I believe it might originally have been a gate weight--perhaps for a church gate

7 5/8" tall at handles

displayed on the book shelf--or

and features lined pages for the front section with alphabetical tabs

Old Marble (Faux) Specimen Ruler with Hand-carved Numbers folk art cake and in the other oneA 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