Tiny Carved Wooden Skull Paper Knife greyhound plate perhaps the man with moving

perhaps the man with moving arms most of all

and that the pointed horizontal ends make it look a little like a weapon

Text on each dish identifies the characters and their professions: Guignol himself

I have a soft spot for old folky inlaid frames like this

Tiny Carved Wooden Skull Paper Knife greyhound plate perhaps the man with movingI find this rather a haunting little carving, I assume meant to serve as a letter opener, and certainly with well more than a hundred years on it I have to think it has opened some letters bearing pretty sad news. The skull itself is tiny, but reads very clearly as a skull, which I've shot with some magnification to get a better sense of its details, which make it look a bit more crude than with viewed by the eye alone. Pretty amazing. 4" long; skull