Bisque doll eyes

 

This is a very large doll whose eyes have fallen out.

She was made by Heubach Kopplesdorf in Germany. She likely dates to the 1920's.

She has sleeping glass eyes and one glass eye has broken off the rocker.

That red blob is actually a molded tongue.

Her wig is quite the matted mess.

A bit of time with a pick and the matted mess reveals that it was once a short, side-parted bob

This wig was not a higher quality wig. Higher quality wigs had the hair woven into wefts and then stiched onto a fabric wig cap.  Lower quality wigs were 'topknot wigs'. Which means they were made by stuffing a handful of mohair in a hole in the top of the head or pate....and then gluing down and styling the mohair. They were quick and cheap to make. It is common to see topknot wigs on small dolls. Less common to see them on a doll this big. It is a wonder it survived at all!

But back to the eyes.....

Sometimes, with a bit of fiddling, you can glue the eye mechanism back together while it is in place inside the head. That saves the original eye plasters.

These eyes took a couple of tries but success!

She is back together and waiting on her clothing to be cleaned.

Teddy repairs

 

This Teddy has arrived to get new eyes and paw pads. And, a smile recreated

His paw pads were made with Rexine or oilcloth.

This pad has been covered up....who knows how bad things are under it.

Teddy has a squeaker inside that no longer squeaks. To fix that one has to extract the squeaker.

Every stuffed toy has a final seam that was often hand stiched closed.

Teddy's final seam was in his back. It got opened.

After a bit of rummaging around in his wood-wool stuffing, the squeaker is extracted.

This is a typical squeaker problem....tears in the bellows cloth.

Here is the squeaker with new bellows cloth.

It works!

Teddy's one paw padcovering gets removed.

It is really not too bad!

His lower paws get recovered with an antique cotton that is then painted and waxed to mimic his original paw pad fabric.

Done.

Renard et Souris

 

Renard is a cloth badger who has arrioved with his friend Souris to be strengthened.

Renard has traveled extensively and his cloth is suffering.

He has had a variety of mending jobs including darning, applied patches and glue.

His basic cotton fabric is thin and is wearing out in several spots.

This is his tail.

Renard gets unstuffed.The plan is to give him a new striped fabric chest and tail, line the rest of his body and tack all his holes to the lining.

Old chest piece.

New chest piece.

Newly strengthened Renard.

A whole hip repair/replacement???

 This doll has arrived to (hopefully) get her hip fixed and to spruce up her eyes.

She is a plastic doll from the 1950's

Her eyes are covered with white stuff.

Despite how the white stuff looks, it is not mold. It is leaching plasticizer.

Sometimes the irises are covered with plasticizer but these eyes are not bad at all!

The whole hip on the one leg is missing.

Rebuilding vintage plastic into a functioning hip will not be easy.

So with fingers crossed, I go looking for a similar doll who can donate her leg.

Sometimes luck in on your side and you find a donor.

She now has an intact right leg. 

The donor even gave up her undies and shoes!

An 1830's doll

 

This doll is very long!

And, very old!

She has no feet.

She has a head made from paper mache.

At some point, her head got damaged and the pieces got glued back together.

But where is the shoulder plate piece? It apparently is gone.

Her body is made of kid leather with wooden extremeties.

The leather seams have split here and there and have a variety of patches.

Look at that hair detail!

The first thing to do is to stabilize her body where sawdust is leaking out of split seams and torn leather.

Here is the same leg repaired.

I move up the body and find this under the loosely sewn cloth around her waist.

Yikes! There are missing bits of leather here!

After some extensive patching we get this....

And then a cover to the patches.

That is one tiny waist for a large doll!

While the body was being manipulated for it's repairs, the old glue holding the head on started to loosen. It would be easier to repair off of the body.

So.....off it comes.

Inside the head is packed paper.

And under the paper is cloth.

The paper and cloth were likely added during this doll's previous repairs.

Before.

During.

She needs some contour tweaks around her nose and mouth and only has a base paint layer on her repairs, but she is slowly looking less bashed up.

Done.

She got new feet carved too.

This doll came with original, totally hand sewn clothing.

This is her corset with metal stays.

Which laced up the back.

Then came a corset cover and slip embroidered with the date 1836.

And then her dress!