I did a little "googling" on bakelite and found that it was patented in 1907. When its patent ran out in 1927, its rights were bought by the Catalin Corporation that was already manufacturing a similar phenol material called Catalin used in the manufacture of costume jewelery among other end products. Bakelite and Catalin effectively disappeared as manufacturing media in the early '50's with the advent of Lucite. This may give us a range of manufacturing dates for the material used to make your "thingy."