Shipping disaster!

Sometimes the postal system is not kind to your treasures.
This gorgeous porcelain ball-jointed artist's doll was sent from overseas.

She was very well packed in a wooden box but the box showed some hints of trouble.....the lid was separated at one corner.

Inside the box was this sight....

The doll has broken in the neck and upper chest area.

It is had to tell from the picture but the doll's porcelain neck and upper chest pieces have broken into  many pieces.

Here are the bits of the upper torso piece after the doll was unstrung.

And this is the neck part.
It had broken into 8 pieces. The original  bisque had been poured very thin which likely contributed to the breakage?
Here some pieces have already been glued together.


As this is a current artist's doll, could the artist make a replacement neck and upper torso piece? That would be much preferable to piecing the broken original pieces together and repainting them.
I will continue to repair the broken bits while we see if the artist can make new ones....maybe with a thicker neck piece?

Now we have the neck pieced back together, filled and sanded. It has also been reinforced internally with a layer of epoxy.

The torso has been pieced back together but not filled yet.

Relief!
I was not looking forward to the intricate paint work needed around the molded necklace of this doll.
The artist was able to make new pieces to replace the ones that broke. The new neck looks thicker and sturdier than the original which broke.
So now  the doll can get restrung.

Here she is....wigless, but no longer a broken doll.

Undoing previous repairs

This guy is an antique doll from the Armand Marseille company.
He has had a previous repair on the top of his torso.
And, he needs to be restrung.

The repair was coated with a very thick layer of paint that poorly matches the original finish.

And the repair is not holding up with time.

Here is the original repair site uncovered.

The thick overpaint scraped off quite well. That amount of overpaint was unnecessary for a repair that was confined to the neck socket.

Progress.....the torso is repaired and the repair is starting to get disguised.

Fully disguised now.

Body repairs complete and he is restrung.

Amputee....times two!

These are two little antique dolls made by Armand Marseille.
Each of them have lost part of their left feet.

When you are rebuilding parts it is helpful to have a support inside the putty for strength.
One leg has a wooden peg sticking out that will be enough support.
The other leg gets a small bit of wire glued in for support.

The feet have been rebuilt and it is time for paint.

Paint done.

German bisque head doll restoration

This is a nice sized antique doll made by the Armand Marseille company. Their name sounds French but they were a German company.

She has some issues.....she needs re-stringing for sure.
Her body could use some repairs before re-stringing.

She has lost all her fingers and thumbs. I would like to know if there is a story behind this. It is not uncommon to find a couple of missing fingers on these bodies....but all of them?

The fingers can be rebuilt.

This is one of her body issues. The seam between the cardboard bits is splitting and some of the overlying gesso and paint is gone.

These cracks can be glued with a good carpentry glue and then the defects get filled in with epoxy.

This doll needs some dental work too.
Her middle 2 teeth have been broken.
This type of doll has porcelain teeth that are made in one piece. It would be hazardous to try and get the remainder of the dental work out so I will make her a bridge.

Her missing fingers are starting to be rebuilt.
I do one at a time on each hand and let each new finger harden before I start the next. That way I am not knocking a newly built and still soft finger out of place while I work on it's neighbour.

Right now each hand has 2 new fingers formed. The third fingers have gotten their supporting wires installed and I am waiting for the glue to harden before adding epoxy clay and forming the finger.

All the holes and cracks are filled and sanded. Her fingers have been rebuilt.
Next is paint.....

Here she is with her new fingers and her repairs disguised.
She is modelling a potential wig.....vintage mohair with rather impressive sausage curls.

Here she is dressed in an antique dress.

Rosebud by Horsman

This is 'Rosebud'. She was made by the Horsman Doll Co. in the 1930's.
She was a typical 'Mama doll' of the time. She is jointed at the shoulders, hips and neck. She has a voice-box inside her torso that no longer works. She has tin sleep eyes. She once had a nice wig.....now she has a nasty synthetic wig that does not suit her.

Her paint layer has mostly failed.
Someone has drawn on some eyebrows and eyelashes.

Her original cloth body has been recovered and one arm is taped up.

So we start by peeling off some of the nastier layers.

Here she has had the synthetic wig removed, the re-cover of the body has been removed and the tape on the arm is gone.

I see why the arm was taped up now.....but there are better ways to mend broken composition than tape.

Roadblock!
Usually I like totally dismantling a doll like this to wash and repair it's cloth body.
But Rosebud has less common joints at her shoulders. To dismantle these, I would have to grind off the post which would destroy the joint apparatus.
So the body will get a surface cleaning only. It is still sturdy despite it's slightly grungy look......the body will not be seen once she has clothes anyways.....

Her silent voicebox will get its bellows replaced so hopefully she will squawk again.
















The bellows have been replaced so it is time to hear a 1930's high-tech sound....

Here is Rosebud's head before her failing paint got addressed:

And here she is after:

Now she has completed her new paint and is waiting for the rest of her reassembly. Those are her teeth sitting below her eye rocker. They are made from a simple piece of celluloid that had tooth shapes cut along one edge and then it was glued inside the head at the mouth opening with a piece of red felt behind it. This is a fairly common tooth assembly found in composition dolls.

Now she is back together. A wig is needed next.

Here she is with a vintage human hair wig and a 'new' dress made from antique calico.

A Schoenhut wig repair.

 This is a nice little doll made by the Schoenhut company.
Her wig looks a little weird.....too thick bangs.....

......and two different colours of hair.

Someone has glued a brunet hairpiece on top of the remnants of a dirty-blonde wig.

So, off comes the brunette hairpiece.

Here is what is left of this doll's original wig!

You can see her original cotton wig cap nailed on to her head and one lonely weft of dirty-blonde mohair still partially circles her head.
It seems she originally had a bobbed hairstyle.
It is good to keep dolls original when possible.
This poor wig can be spruced up by adding wefts of dirty-blonde mohair.

All her mohair is a similar colour now.
The 'new' wefts were harvested from an old ragged wig.