Iron Studded French Boules/Petanque Ball with Cross Pattern, c. 1880s faux eggs and a beautiful one

and a beautiful one

and some scratches and a few dark marks visible on one side

but I did find a few lustreware graduated sets of three

There is pencil writing on both sides of the slide tip lid of the box

showing the backing as sewn together of pieces of what I believe is sack cloth

Iron Studded French Boules/Petanque Ball with Cross Pattern, c. 1880s faux eggs and a beautiful oneA beauty. I've found one or two of these over the years but it has been quite a while. It is a French petanque ball (petanque a version of boules), and is an early one, c. 1880s; they don't make iron studded ones like this anymore! From what I have learned about examples like this, the interior of the ball is likely olive wood, which was hand shaped and sanded, and then the square iron nails were hammered in one by one, with each nail hole precisely