Early Stone Fruit Walnut victorian seaweed sample late 19th c Pennsylvania German

late 19th c  Pennsylvania German I believe

which I love for its strangeness and its crudeness--one has the sense that its maker chose their three very favorite carved heads and then made this tree-like platform in order to give them a home

all detailed in the little booklet

It seems possible that there was once something behind the cutout but I don't know

Early Stone Fruit Walnut victorian seaweed sample late 19th c Pennsylvania GermanI've been wanting to find an old stone fruit walnut, and here one is, with great detail to the carving of the marble, making it look just like the real thing. I'm going to keep looking for these, as I think it would be wonderful to fill a bowl with a bunch of them. When I was young, one Christmas my grandfather gave me a bag of walnuts which (I was delighted to soon learn) he had carefully split, hollowed out, stuffed with dollars, and glued back