A Schoenhut doll's flaking paint

 

This carved hair Schoenhut doll has arrived in a flurry of paint flakes.

Her paint layers are failing badly.

Her carved hair bow is painted an unusual burgundy colour.

A few layers of flaking paint have been scraped off the right side here.

Every paint layer tests positive for lead. This will be a slow excavation and will be done outside.

Even the base layer of paint (presumably the original)  is failing badly. It is powdery and flaking off to reveal bare wood.

Many layers of paint and filler have been applied to this doll over the years.

None are stable.

Did this doll have moisture damage at some point?

Or are the various layers incompatible with each other and causing the failures?

The doll's head gets removed to facilitate removing the failed layers.

This reveals a clue to her current sad state.

Her hardware is extremely rusty, possibly indicating a history of moisture damage.

Here she is with most of the flaky and crumbling bits removed.

The remaining bits of pink are not original paint. They are what remains of a gesso layer. This doll's head has only a few bits of original paint left on the back of her head. This pink gesso was covering those remnants of original paint

Here she is, finally, with all of the failing layers removed.

With several smoothing layers, some recontouring and a start to some new paint she is trying to blend in with some of her kin.

She is done.

She kept what was left of the original paint on her body. No repaint was done to it.

Repairing a Schoenhut animal's leather bits

 

This Schoenhut goat was poorly packed for shipping and arrived with one ear and one horn broken off.These bits are original to him so it will be nice to save them.

The horns are made of leather but the leather has become brittle over the years. Both horns show evidence of 'red rot'. That is a degredation process common to old vegetable-tanned leathers.

The horns were inserted and glued into a hole drilled into the head, then painted.

How does one piece together 2 bits of old degenerating leather?

First, the deteriorating leather is treated with a leather consolidator. I treated both bits of the broken horn and also his intact horn as it was brittle and starting to flake.

Once I had sturdier leather bits, I could fasten them together.

Because of the shape of the horn and some missing leather at the break, just gluing the bits together would not last long.

So the broken horn will get internally fixated with a wire.

Here the broken off bit has had a wire installed. A hole was pre-drilled and acid free glue was used to secure the wire.

Drill a hole on the other side of the break to receive the wire and glue the bits together.

Success!

I glued his ear back on without support. It seems to work.

Keen eyes might notice his beard looks odd at the top? 

It apparently broke off in the past and someone taped it on with a little bit of white cloth tape. But now the tape is starting to peel away.

Time to fix his beard!

Here is how the last person fixed his beard.

Getting the tape off of aging leather will be a delicate process.

This is his beard finally extracted from the tape and the hole it was glued into.

The brittle leather has been consolidated and treated with a leather conditioner.

Then the bits have been glued on a piece of Japanese paper for support.

Here is his beard after being stabilized and reinstalled without the tape.

Another Eaton's Beauty Doll

 

This doll was made by the Canadian company 'Reliable' and was sold as an Eaton's Beauty doll.

She was made between 1939-1943

She is all composition with tin eyes and a Saran wig.

He eyes are a little skew-wiff but seem to be in their original setting and alignment.

She has lost some eyelashes which will be replaced.

Her biggest problems are a few structural cracks in her torso.

Lesser problems are a crack in a side seam and....

.....a couple partial finger amputations.

Off comes her wig. That will help do a more complete wig repair and it will help in dealing with the excessive glue and various finish issues.

A bit of a crack up one side.

This doll's paint was applied very thinly and is worn off in many areas. Well over 50% of her paint is gone.

So the rest of the paint will be removed with acetone to prepare for a new painted finish.

Her torso cracks have been filled.

The hip sockets also needed reinforcing.

Her structural issues have been corrected and her paint has been refreshed.

Her wig is made of Saran and has stitched curls. That makes combing it out impossible. But the stray hairs can be corraled and eventually tamed enough to wrap around curlers.

Finally she gets put back together and clothed.

Another Schoenhut doll

 

This head has arrived with most of it's paint already removed.

It had had a poor repaint but, unfortunately, when the repaint was removed, there was essentialy no original paint underneath.

The nose and left eye's contours need rebuilding.

There is lingering bits of dark brown paint and a varity of fillers that should be removed to get to a stable surface for rebuilding and repainting.

Now the head is ready to get gessoed which will seal the bare wood.

First layer of filler and paint and we get this.....

Multiple layers later....

Then a bit more paint.....

A large bisque headed doll repair

 

This is a large German bisque headed doll who is a family heirloom. She has arrived to make her look less scary.

Apparently the white colour of her eyes when she was supposed to be 'sleeping' was unnerving to the family member who handed me the doll :-)

That is just some missing eyelids.....but she has scarier issues than that to me.

She has some serious cracks. Cracks in the front...

...and cracks in the back.

Even a few chips and missing chunks of bisque.

This head looks to be almost completely broken in two. What is holding it together?

Inside the head I find someone has reset the sleep eyes with gray epoxy clay and then added hot glue gun glue to that for extra measure.

Another view.

These compounds are solid and trying to remove them will be hazardous to the eye rocker, so the cracks need to be consolidated from the outside.

But first, this very dirty head needs a good scrub and all the old glue from the wig needs to come off.

After a cleaning the cracks get consolidated. That gets done by painting a thinned adhesive along the cracks that can seep in and harden.

Next the cracks will get filled a bit.

A wig, eyelashes/eyelids and some age appropriate clothes help her look less scary.