A broken baby

 

This doll has arrived.

She is a vintage bisque head doll who has met with a grievous injury.

A detailed Schoenhut doll's restoration

 

This doll has arrived to be restored.

She did not always look like this. She had a total head repaint when her owner bought her. 

She once looked like this.

This is Schoenhut's model 105.

She had been repainted but did not look like she should.

So, off came the repaint!

Here she is part way through the repaint removal.

Sometimes, when removing repaint, you find nice original paint underneath.

Unfortunately this was not the case here.

There is little original paint left.

A celluloid doll with eye issues

 

This doll has arrived to address her missing eye. It hopefully is not missing. Something is rattling around inside her head. We shall hope it is her eye and it is not broken. The eyes are glass.

There are glue remnants around the remaining eye. According to her history, her eyes were repaired before.

She was made by the German company Schildkrot. She is made of celluloid.

On further inspection I find some cracks in her legs. Someone already has had a go at the cracks as there is lots of glue residue along them.

Happiness!

Once the doll's head is removed, out pops the missing eye......intact!

The curved widget is the piece that sits inside her head to string it to the body.

Here is a view inside her head. I have to re-glue the loose eyeball into the socket. But, my fingers are not long enough to position the eyeball.

I need an eye holding tool.

A bit of wire gets bent into an odd shape.

This shape will hold the eyeball as I insert it into the socket.

I use a few dabs of tacky glue on the socket. It is water soluable so, if I mess up, I can reverse the installation with water.

Success!

As the old glue holding the eyes is aging and weakening I added a layer of epoxy around each eyeball inside the head to hold them in more securely.

Her legs were more troublesome.

Normally broken bits of celluloid can be fused together with acetone. But, the previous repair and the old glue remnants were not letting that happen. So, I elected to use tinted epoxy to fill in the cracks. She has scars which could be filled/sanded/painted to disguise them. But she has clothes that will hide the scars. They will remain as is.

Effanbee Rosemary

 

This is Rosemary. She has come to get her composition issues addressed and something done with her hair.

She has a human hair wig.

Her face is in nice condition.

Her arms and legs are peeling.

After the usual composition restoration steps her limbs look much better.

Her wig was another matter! Her owner did not like the faded colour so I tried to dye it.

I combed it out and tried some human hair dye on it.

It didn't darken much so I gave up and styled it.

Here she is all refreshed. Her dress is original. 

One smashed head.

 

Here is the picture I was sent.

Please can you fix this doll?

I said I would try. 

The body, clothes and a bag of head bits arrved.

Here are the head bits. A few other random bits were in the bag too.

This head was once a standard fired bisque head that had been painted over in acrylic paint.....maybe a previous repair?

Here I have cleaned the repaint off of the bit with the nose.

Bisque repairs are not my thing but I can only improve upon a head in this condition.....I hope!

After cleaning every single bit I get them pieced back together.

But, there are lots of chips and a large section at the top of the head is missing.

So, I get busy rebuilding with epoxy putty and filling with epoxy paste.

She doesn't look too pretty yet!

After many more rounds of smoothing and puttying, she is getting to look less damaged.

Then, finally, she looks like an intact doll.

A massive skull defect!

 

This doll has arrived for repairs.

She doesn't look too bad from this angle.

That is a lovely factory original dress she is wearing.

Her big problem is that a large chunk of her head is missing.

Her arms are peeling a bit.

The cloth above each arm has issues.

How do you close a massive skull defect like this?

I make a base from automotive repair mesh and epoxy it into place. Then I start rebuilding on top of the mesh.

Here we see the metal mesh installed in the head.. The grey is the epoxy paste that I used to glue it into the head. The beige is another type of epoxy paste that I am using like a spackle to cover the mesh.

I extract her voicebox from her torso to see if I can get it working again.

Her body has the typical stuffing of the era. That is excelsior or woodwool.

This is the usual problem.....the bellows fabric has dried out and is full of holes.

I remove the arms to make it easier to fill and paint them.

Here the head has had quite a bit of filling. the grey primer helps identify areas that need more sanding or filling.

After the contours meet my approval she gets painted. She now looks like this:

Schoenhut before and after pictures

 

16" bonnet head. Restoration to face only.

16" model #302. Restoration to face. Needs a wig next.

 

A 14" bonnet head doll got some facial work....

and some touchups to her bonnet. 

This 14" is model 313. She has smooth eyes instead of the more common intaglio eyes.

This is a 14" 308 model.

This is model 103

This carved hair girl just wanted a bit more colour.

This is a 21" sleep-eyed Miss Dolly.

This is model 204

 This is Schoenhut's manikin. He had some touch ups that stood out a bit too much (left picture).

The touchups were removed (top right picture).

Then he got new touch ups to blend in better (bottom right picture).

This larger Schoenhut doll got several touch ups.

This 14" Schoenhut girl got touch ups.

Again, more touch ups.