A Schoenhut boy's repaint

 

This is model #201.

He has had an interesting life.

He has very dark hair that is not original.

There is evidence all over his face and body that indicates he was once painted in a dark brown skin tone. That skin colour had long been removed (mostly).

The plan is to improve his appearance somehow.

Seeing as the dark hair is not original, it gets removed.

Pretty well zero original hair paint underneath! And an interesting crack.

He will need more than a few touchups. Repaint looks best when it is done after any unoriginal layers are removed. The vestiges of previous fillers and repaint obscure carved details and also make it harder for the new paint to adhere.

So, I start gently scraping off and digging out all that old dark brown paint and any other paint that had been added over the years.

He actually has a few scraps of original facial paint left. And, he has his original blue eyes under the brown.

After he is down to original paint and/or bare wood he gets sealed. Then starts the repainting process. He will need multiple thin layers of flesh paint.

A few layers later he looks like this. A couple friends are also getting some new paint.

Some time later he starts getting some hair and eye colour. I am also trying out some antiquing methods for his face.

This is his final look.

He looks paler in the picture due to AI working automatically on my cell phone pictures. I need to find a more accurately coloured picture of him!

A Schoenhut girl gets just a few touch ups

 

This is Schoenhut's model 105.

This is how she looked when she was bought by her current owner.

The repaint is very thick. Her new owner decided to take off the repaint.

Under the repaint was this.

This doll had had a factory repaint even before the thick repaint seen above was done. Multiple layers are still present all showing varying degrees of wear. She has 2 layers of gesso in there too!

The factory repaint had changed the colour of her bow. I was able to figure out that the pink colour was the first colour that that bow had had.

Her owner wants just a few touch ups.....not a total strip down and repaint.

I was able to remove the blue bow remnants and added some more pink. Just a bit more.

Her face gets a few touch ups too.

Trying to decide when to stop touch ups is always tricky. 

At least she can see again.

The elephant in the room!

 So, I was asked if I could fix an old bobble head elephant figure. I said 'probably'. I envisioned  being handed a medium sized cardboard box containing elephant bits.

Instead I was asked to come out to the car to inspect the elephant bits. In the back of an SUV was a very large elephant head, torso and a couple other bits.

It seems I like a challenge. The elephant parts were transferred to my SUV and home it all went for inspection.

Here he is.

He is an antique figure made of felt covered papier mache. He was probably a store display.

This is his main problem. The piece that has hooks to hang his head from has come out.

Fortunately that piece was one of the bits that was handed over to me.

It gets glued securely in place.

Then it is on to repairing the raggedy areas where felt is coming away and the papier mache is shredding.

While I figure out how to repair this type of damage I amuse myself by contemplating this pachyderm's head movement.

This big guy has another problem in that his whole left ear is missing. There is a hole in his head near the missing ear too.

It may be hard to make out but here I have glued cardboard under the hole. This will support the new papier mache. Just south of that is some new paper mache that I applied to repair a raggety area.

After some experimenting, I am making progress on a new ear. This is made with a wire mesh base covered in paper mache. Then wool felt is glued onto the paper mache.

It needs lots of antiquing still, but this could work!

Getting there.....

Finally Big Guy is done!

He shows off his new left ear.

And then....he leaves.

Grumpy gets a new finger.

 

This guy looks seriously grumpy!

Maybe he is grumpy because he has lost a finger?

I should fix that!

First, a wire support for the new epoxy clay finger gets glued in.

He has his new finger....but he is still grumpy!

A Schoenhut doll and fillers galore!

 

This is an interesting 14" Schoenhut doll.

She has been repainted but does not look like any particular Schoenhut model.

Her owner stripped off the first layer of repaint

But she still doesn't look like a standard Schoenhut model.

So she got sent to me.

The white coating was primer so I stripped it all off.

Under the primer was this.

Lots and lots of filler! It was quite thick in many areas.

The filler was altering original facial features so it got stripped off too.

Under the filler on her left face was some wood damage.

She will need a filler put back there.

A front view.

She has had some harrowing life experiences!

A bit of filler here and there plus a fair bit of paint leaves her looking more in keeping with original Schoenhut doll paint.

My best guess as to her model is #308.

Rubber hands on a German bisque head doll

 This nice old doll has arrived to get freshed up.

Her wig is messy, her hands are odd and she has something weird feeling on her torso under her sewn on longjohns.

The stitches on the longjohns get picked open.

Happily, the weird feeling thing on her torso turned out to be a wad of hardened elastic inside a pair of underwear. She had no issues with her torso after all.

Her hands are interesting. These are rubber hands. Unfortunately rubber does not age well and these hands are warped and quite brittle. Her left hand is crumbling at the wrist.

Old rubber can not be rejuvinated. You either accept the warped look and the knowledge that they will continue to crumble away or you replace the hands.

Vintage parts can sometimes be hard to find. Fortunately I had a composition pair that would fit and they got painted to match her body finish.

Then it was on to hair styling!

After a new 'do she headed home.

She gets reunited with her original dress.

This is a factory chemise which identifies her as an Eaton's Beauty Doll.

China heads on dissolving bodies

 In come two china dolls and what is left of their bodies.

Doll #1's head is off already.

She has a cloth body stuffed with sawdust and china lower limbs.

The cloth suffers from dry rot and is very weak with multiple tears and sawdust leaking everywhere.

The best approach is to remove all the stiches from the old cloth body and use the remnants to make a pattern for a new cloth body.

Here is the pattern.

One has to extrapolate the pattern lines around the torn/missing areas.

Here is a new body part way through getting stuffed with sawdust.

Doll #'s new body is done.

Doll #2's body is in equally bad shape although someone has tried to recover her legs at some point.

She gets the same type of new body as her twin.

Both are done.

And dressed in the clothes they arrived in.