It's a Mad, Mad Mystery Artifact

We had very few guesses for last week's mystery artifact.  Here's hoping that the interesting shape and function of this next object will be a bit easier to deduce!

This artifact is made of wood, likely walnut and oak.  It dates to around 1850, and it has a turned oak handle visible in the interior which allows the c-shaped brackets to be screwed open and shut.  Any ideas as to what the function of this object might be?  Let us know your guess in the comments section below!

This week's artifact was suggested by our volunteer extraordinaire, Madeleine Garvey.  I wanted to give her a special shout-out for the fantastic job she's done in the past couple of weeks in helping to inventory and store the many hundreds of artifacts that had been on display in our Prairie Stories exhibit.  Thank for all your hard work, Madeleine!