Antique Handmade Book Box with Interior Portrait man in box thick cardboard with really nice

thick cardboard with really nice black backs

It was painted in oil on cloth (not canvas)

so enough for three to play

feeling perhaps like workers' housing

the yellow meaning caution

Antique Handmade Book Box with Interior Portrait man in box thick cardboard with really niceI rarely meet a book shaped thing I don't like, and this feels like something of an example of not judging a book by its cover! I'm thinking there may once have been a picture of some sort adhered to the outside cover, which shows a bare spot surrounded by red paint now and perhaps that picture functioned as a sort of counterpart to the portrait print of woman in large plumed hat inside; my guess is that it turned this book box into a c. 1800 French