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.