Holy moly! A wax over composition doll now!

 

This is a very large wax over composition doll. She dates to about the 1860's or 70's.

She has arrived because she did a face plant and has an obvious injury.

She has an interesting history of previous trauma and repairs.

Many years ago she was thrown around during a robbery and was quite damaged. She had extensive repairs done in the 1970's. The darker yellow just below her headband is a repair compound that was used then.

To repair her current injury, a mesh base gets epoxied under the hole.

Then the mesh can be covered with epoxy clay to rebuild the hole and replicate the missing contours.

Then, once the cured epoxy is painted to blend in, it gets waxed.

Not perfect but the gaping hole is gone.

Now the old repair gets addressed. Can it be modified to blend in better?

Off comes the repaint to reveal how the previous repair was done. There seems to have been a large hole that was dealt with in a similar fashion to how I dealt with the forehead hole. This person used plaster as the repair compound. So I am going to recontour the plaster a bit then add a layer of epoxy clay to sculpt the hair details.

A bit of paint and then some wax over the epoxy help blend it in to the original surfaces.