Another 'Topsy' doll

 

These are the bits and pieces of a small composition doll.

This particular doll was made by the Canadian company 'Reliable'. They sold black dolls like this as 'Topsy' dolls.

She has had a previous repair in that the top of her head has an applied plaster texture in areas. She is going to keep that repair history inact and keep her aged paint. She will just get a few missing paint areas filled, painted and then she will get her torso fixed and get restrung.

The staple in the picture is where a tuft of wool once was. She would have had three tufts of wool stapled on to her head to make up her hair style.

Here is her head patched up.

Topsy is done

She came with a box full of outfits.

This is one outfit.

Total makeover for a composition doll

This is 'Elizabeth'.

She is a family doll who has arrived for restoration.

She has many issues!

There is no useable paint left on her. One foot is broken off. Happily the foot piece was saved.

A close up of her surface.

Someone tried to spruce her up at some point with painted on features/hair and what looks to be a coat of varnish?

Elizabeth may have started life with a wig?

One clue is finding a staple under the thick black DIY hair paint.

And another clue is remnants of glue with a cloth weave imprint.

Dolls of this era were made and sold with molded painted hair as a basic model. The factory made pricier upgraded models by plunking a wig over the molded/painted hair and putting on fancier clothes.

To get Elizabeth repainted successfully, all her surfaces need to have the cracked and blistering stuff removed. You need a stable base to work up from. 

So here is one arm untouched and the other arm taken down to a stable base. The base in Elizabeth's case is her basic composition layer.

In the factory, this base of composition would have been dipped into a glue-like compound that was meant to smooth things out for paint. This compound was quite prone to cracking and blistering over the years.

You can see some big chunks of this layer at the top of this picture that were peeling off of the underlying composition.

This is progress.....really!

These are Elizabeth's eyes.

They are actually in pretty good shape. I am just going to clean them and fill in a sparse area of her eyelashes.

The eye construction is a less common sort. The visible parts are celluloid domes that are glued onto wood spheres to make eyeballs.

The other doodad in the picture is an expansion bar which holds the eye mechanism inside the head.

This is Elizabeth getting some fillers applied and fingers rebuilt.

Finally the many layers of filler/primer are done and she can head to the paint booth.

Here is Elizabeth finishing her journey through the painting process.

This is my high-tech drying rack :-D

After painting is done, her eyes get re-installed.

This is how they look inside the head.

And then, she gets reassembled.

She owns a lovely christening dress.

It is perfect for her!

'Rosie'. A composition doll.

 'Rosie' arrives in the mail for restoration. She is another composition doll who has seen better days.

She once had a mohair wig but sports only remnants now.
She has had lots of loving!

She will need to be dismantled to access the eyes and to make her a new body.


















Progress....Rosie is dismantled and her old cracked/peeling pain is removed.

This is Rosie's head minus all the cracked and peeling paint. Some composition dolls that were sold with wigs have molded hair under the wig. Rosie's molded hair is nice but as she had a wig originally, she will get a new one.

This is her head after filling/sanding/priming and a base coat of flesh color.

Now Rosie has a completed paint job

Her limbs have been repainted and she has a new body covering. Her stuffing and voice box are original.

She is waiting for a wig and clothes now.

A new mohair wig and some clothes and she is ready to go home.

 

'Mary'

Teddy's owner was very happy to see Teddy rejuvenated. She then presented me with 'Mary'...her childhood doll who had seen some rough times. And asked to have Mary rejuvenated.

Mary was missing several fingers and toes in addition to her obvious facial issues.

The first thing to do with Mary was to remove her head and limbs and extract her eyes. Her loose paint was peeled off....that was pretty much all her paint!

She then got her holes filled, fingers and toes rebuilt and coated with a couple layers of filler/primer. Lots of sanding between each layer.












Finally, it was paint time.
A new body was needed and was patterned from the remnants of her old one.
So she looks like this now:

Add some appropriately styled clothes, and Mary is ready to return home.