These make me very happy. I am always on the hunt for 19th century bone alphabets, used for teaching spelling and which have become quite precious, but I had never seen a set like this before. With some searching I've found one other set like it documented, housed in just the same sort of bone canister with screw top lid inscribed "London Plaything"--that set a complete uppercase alphabet on one side, and lowercase letters on the other (no pictures) and dated by the British auction house that sold it (for £520 in 2021) to the 1810s.
This set (27 pieces) looks to me to be two sets combined, surely very long ago, all with pictures on one side, but some with just a single capital letter on the flip side, while some feature both upper and lower case letters. There is no "C", "E", "J" "O" "Q" or "S", but there are two A's, two Ds, two L's, 2 Ms, 2 Ts, 2 Ys, and 2 Z's, all bearing different pictures, so no redundancy there. (As with Froebel kindergarten blocks, where one often finds a mix of different blocks inside the boxes, I might guess the mix here goes back to the early school use of these, the result of one set not being kept straight from another!) As is, they completely fill the canister, with the lid screwing tight to keep them together. Between the bees and dice and kiln and twite--and zeal!--I find them completely charming and doubt I'll ever come across another set like them.
Box 2 3/8" t x 1 5/8" d. Letters 1 3/16" d. As noted above, some letters missing, some doubly represented, but no redundancy on the picture sides.There is a split running down one side of the bone canister, as pictured, but it remains sound and the lid still screws on tightly and holds the letters just fine. One old repaired split down the center of the G, stable and sound now.
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