A Schoenhut doll's flaking paint

 

This carved hair Schoenhut doll has arrived in a flurry of paint flakes.

Her paint layers are failing badly.

Her carved hair bow is painted an unusual burgundy colour.

A few layers of flaking paint have been scraped off the right side here.

Every paint layer tests positive for lead. This will be a slow excavation and will be done outside.

Even the base layer of paint (presumably the original)  is failing badly. It is powdery and flaking off to reveal bare wood.

Many layers of paint and filler have been applied to this doll over the years.

None are stable.

Did this doll have moisture damage at some point?

Or are the various layers incompatible with each other and causing the failures?

The doll's head gets removed to facilitate removing the failed layers.

This reveals a clue to her current sad state.

Her hardware is extremely rusty, possibly indicating a history of moisture damage.

Here she is with most of the flaky and crumbling bits removed.

The remaining bits of pink are not original paint. They are what remains of a gesso layer. This doll's head has only a few bits of original paint left on the back of her head. This pink gesso was covering those remnants of original paint

Here she is, finally, with all of the failing layers removed.

With several smoothing layers, some recontouring and a start to some new paint she is trying to blend in with some of her kin.

She is done.

She kept what was left of the original paint on her body. No repaint was done to it.