A carved hair Schoenhut girl

 

This 16" doll has arrived to try and restore her original beauty.

She has had a lot of previous 'work' done.

It might be hard to tell from this picture but her body has been totally repainted and then varnished or shellacked. 

So I start removing overpaint. 

The pinkish paint getting exposed is original paint.

Here is her head with the first layer of overpaint removed on her left.

The pink is a gesso type material. The white is a filler. There are a few areas with other coloured fillers too.

She has had quite the repair history it seems!

I cannot identify any original paint on her head.

The layers of paint and gesso have hidden alot of the carved detail.

Eventually all the overpaint and deteriorated gesso get removed.

One of this doll's problems was a floppy, loose head.

Contributing to this was a chunk of wood missing from the neck socket in the body.

There was also a chunk of wood missing from the bottom of the head.

These missing areas will get filled in with epoxy.

She arrived with a crooked and crudely modeled replacement thumb. That is being redone.

Her head is looking good even though it needs more contouring and fussing......

Her thumb is done and painted to match the other digits.