David's amazing restoration work

Hi everyone...Just though I would show a few of my finest restorations on 17th and 18th century English wooden dolls. Some of you may remember his William and Mary period doll from the 1680’s attributed to William Higgs, which was at one time referred to as “Lady Long Fingers” and resided in the White House Doll and Toy Museum.

She has a hideous repaint done to her face which was made worse by the person who made the mess by smearing the lip paint they had incorrectly applied. Not to mention the horrible eye and eyebrow repaint that looked like stitched up scars.
Luckily the rest of the doll was untouched and had all original paint and patina. I was also very lucky as when I removed the messy repaint, with the remover which I use that will not touch or remove paint over 200 years old, to my surprise I found the ghost of her original face painting underneath and her original cheek colour. I was able to re-apply her face paint exact to the original and reapply the patina to match the rest of the doll so her restoration was undetectable.
One of my finest and one I am so proud of.

 

I am also including photos of some other really fine examples of early, mid and late 18th century English woodens that we have restored as well below including a very rare example from 1720 which had all original paint but obviously stored or displayed very improperly so her very thin plaster, gesso, face paint and lacquer layer was lifting and popping terribly all over her face, forehead and cheeks. Lucky I was able to do a seamless and completely invisible restoration without touching any of her original paint, leaving it 100% intact.