When
I first saw the doll I was unsure if I should buy her or not. She
was very dirty and in pieces and I was not sure of my ability to
restore her, (and I am not fond of baby dolls). Looking at her now
I cannot think why I had any second thoughts, especially considering
her low price; the clothing alone is worth what I paid for the entire
doll. My only concern now is that although I have definitely improved
her by my restoration, I have not kept the doll as original as possible
with my repainting and so on. I will just defend myself by saying
that if purists had found her she would have undoubtedly have been
used in parts rather than kept as a whole doll.
During
the course of the restoration I referred mainly to Barbara Koval's
book How
to Repair and Restore Dolls. I had never had to restore
a doll body before and used the usual techniques with some additions
of my own. I repaired the fingers in the following way: I cast some
fingers of a similar size (from a Jumeaux hand mould) in "Compobell"
slip. I drilled into the finger and then the broken stump using
a 2mm drill bit which I very carefully manipulated by hand. This
was not easy as composition slip is not intended to be used in this
way and is very brittle; the result however was better than my attempt
to mould a finger freeform around a matchstick. I used a two-part
epoxy to glue a piece of matchstick into the stump and the new finger
to hold them together and offer support - some adjustment was required
here to get the finger to be the right length. I then filled the
gap, and rebuilt the toes using a wood filler which was subsequently
sanded to the right shape. The new parts were than painted and the
body restrung fairly loosely; I then discovered how she had sustained
such damaged to her head as she has a tendency to collapse under
her own weight backwards.
Her
head really is quite badly damaged and alone would not not have
been preserved. However I did not do very much to it other than
cleaning without soaking. I wanted to avoid having to reset the
sleep eyes, and there was a risk that having soaked it apart I could
not have restored it any better than the original attempt. I cleaned
the face with facial cleansing lotions and creams, and lightly cleaned
it with soapy water without immersing in the water. I picked off
the visible excess glue carefully with a scalpel. Some pieces of
the head had come away as I removed the wig; I reglued these and
rebuilt the back of the head, filling where necessary with wood
filler and sanding. I experimented here at the back of the head,
using acrylics to see if I could match the colour of the porcelain.
It seemed to me that her wig had been cut (children seem to do this),
as well as being dirty and sparse. I added in some locks of hair
- I used a viscose hair as it matched the colour moderately well,
and also anyone subsequently can easily see that it is not part
of the original. In handling the wig, much of the dirt and old glue
fell out. At first I thought I would make a new wig but having seen
pictures of what I believe is an original of this type, I decided
to keep the hair short in style and add a bonnet. The clothing merely
needed excessive washing; some of it I removed as it seemed clearly
not to fit the doll.
Despite
the damage to the head you can see it was marked at the top "201".
I searched the various books I have and found that this number is
not widely attributed and even less so if restricted to baby doll
types. In Coleman's Encyclopaedia
of Dolls Volume 2 I found it attributed to Schützmeister
& Quendt and the illustration seems to show a doll like this
one. I have to emphasise though that this doll does not have any
makers stamp ("SQ") - just the number. I also found this
same doll mark advertised on the web in various auctions (and the
doll's picture looked the same), and they suggested that it is made
by Schützmeister
& Quendt. (I noticed also that these dolls had short hair with
similar white clothing and some are referred to as "he").
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