Back from Norway after a wonderful holiday (some details may follow), ready to give you a slightly different kind of mystery object:
Do you have any idea what this object from the collections of the Horniman Museum might be?
As usual put your suggestions below and hopefully I should be able to give some feedback this week. The answer will follow on Monday. Good luck!
Zygoma 
I think it’s a snuff box looks too small to be a stool.
Certainly too small for a stool, but a bit big for a snuff box I’d have thought – the snuff would go stale unless the owner was a very heavy user!
a tea caddy?
That’s what I thought it was when I first saw it, but that’s not what it turned out to be…
I think the padding on top might be a pin cushion so the box itself might hold pins and perhaps needles.
I’d have thought the pins and needles would end up everywhere in a box that size – I wouldn’t want to put my hand in it.
Not if they themselves were in smaller boxes
a Jack-in-the-Box box?
Funnily enough, that was the second thing I though it was (after a tea caddy) when I saw it, but nope.
musical box?
Not musical I’m afraid
How does it open? Does the front face fold down and is that relevant?
PS It’s not a badger’s skull, is it? 🙂
Good question! The top hinges upwards and the sides fold down.
As to a badger skull, that looks more like this…
1st Jack in the box?
Doh! Not only beaten but wrong.
😉
OK, so the top hinges up and the sides open. The illustrations are of children perhaps illustrating a nursery rhyme, if so probably Georgie Porgie. On closer inspection it seems the whole thing is made of cardboard with the illustrations pasted on. That all suggests some kind of child’s toy. As to what, no, still haven’t a clue!
This has been niggling all weekend – I remember playing with something like this when I was a child. Not exactly playing with, but looking at, at my grandmother’s. These illustrations look very familiar but from something a bit different.
BTW, I only just read your text.
A clock perhaps?
Not a clock – although I can see where you’re coming from.
It’s the missing piece of the Large Hadron Collider. CERN has been looking for it everywhere.
Hmm, I can see how it may have connections with Switzerland, given the decoration, but I think it’s a bit old to be part of the LHC…
It’s not a slightly odd and impractical hat is it? It was just that the base reminds me slightly of the brim of a hat.
It would take a pretty square head to pull it off…