Silk faced boudoir doll

This is a boudoir doll that has arrived for a spruce up.

She is made of cloth and has a gorgeous, detailed outfit.

Old silk is prone to shattering as it ages. The fibres break down due to the damaging effects of production methods that were used years ago.

This doll's silk face is a stocking type of silk and has shattered quite widely.

The face had 2 layers of silk so the top layer was removed. That revealed the 2nd layer to be faded and still a bit tattered but her appearance has improved already.

Another issue is her overall colour.

Under her clothes is the original peach colour of the silk stocking material that made her skin. The exposed silk has faded and has greyed.

Her overall grey staining is unusual and looks very much like smoke/soot. After asking her owner about her history I find out she spent much of her life in a house heated with coal. They grey makes sense now. But, if coal heating did this to a cloth doll, what did it do to the lungs of the human house occupants?

The grey hair was not originally grey. It was a pale blonde. You can still see the original colour under the stained hair.

But, there is no safe way to clean the grey from this doll. She keeps her grey hair.

This is as good as I can get her. She has had a skin graft to the tip of her nose and another larger one to hide her discoloured chest.

Flirty eyes

 This is an antique German doll that has what are called 'flirty eyes'. They move side to side and they also sleep.

Flirty eyes like this 'sleep' by having metal eyelids move over the eyes when the doll lies down.

But, this doll's eyes do not work well.

Her inside mechanism.

It is hard to see but there are two weighted mechanisms in there. One moves the eyes from side to side and one moves the metal eyelids over the eyes to make the doll 'sleep'.

What was missing from this mechanism was a string that suspends the upper weight which makes they eyes move side to side. The string is secured at the front of the head by a little blob of plaster.

In this case the string had broken so replacing it made the mechanisms work properly again.

She has a couple other issues to address. A hand missing some fingers and a caved in belly button with a previous repair.

All fingers are intact now and she has had her torso patched and her hair curled.