19th C. School Slate with Lovely Old Corner Mend gifts sign wooden rat reminds me a

wooden rat reminds me a lot of old carved folk art ice fishing decoys

dating to the 1930s I believe

A point near the top of the head of this woman in profile is labeled Erongarícuaro (which means "Place of waiting" in the Purepecha language)

and a rope tail

a bit of aging/darkening to the grass on the exterior and couple of lost stitches

19th C. School Slate with Lovely Old Corner Mend gifts sign wooden rat reminds me aPurchased this week from a wonderful, old school dealer couple with a historic house of a shop in MA about an hour outside of Boston, this is just my sort of slate much loved and lovingly mended at one corner long ago with a scrap of metal surely cut from some other once functional thing laying around. With two lovely rows of iron nails there, wooden nails plugs still at a couple of the corners, and a beautiful patina to the rest of it. And traces of