Fantastic Antique Dancing Doll (Uncle Sam?) with Wonderful Painted Details puzzle cube scattered stains

scattered stains

with this little piggy looking as if ready to run off to the market

though looking a bit like a old man

Consisting of 83 woodcut prints

hand-colored deck clearly reveals what I had a hunch was true: this Mexico card is a hand-drawn version of that printed deck

Fantastic Antique Dancing Doll (Uncle Sam?) with Wonderful Painted Details puzzle cube scattered stainsOne of the best faces ever on this guy, in my humble opinion, which looks to have been rendered in watercolor with graphite underneath, and the painted details on his chest and giving a zigzag band to his hat are equally good! My guess is that he was meant to represent Uncle Sam, and I think likely dates to the 1870s or so, when representations of the character had become widely popular. Clearly, with hole in his belly for a dowel, and large, flat