Repairing an Antique Doll part 1

Meet my AM 1897. She was made some time around 1897, but not necessarily that year, by Armand Marseille, a German doll maker…probably the most popular doll maker. Sure, she displays well:

However, under that white dress, she’s falling apart. I’ve been in denial for about a decade now. This doll came into my possession in 1999 or so. I’d put her on layaway at an online doll seller, made a few payments and forgot about her. About eight months later, the shop sent me a beautiful doll greeting card reminding me about her. Whoops! Anyway, I’ve displayed her for all these years, but I knew I’d have to get down to business and see what was really wrong with her hips. She’d been leaking a little sawdust when I first got her, but that was back when I was still afraid to dive in and do repairs.

These days, well, to prevent the damage from getting worse, I took her into my craft room:

I removed her clothing so that I could get the real story…well, almost all of her clothing. When I got to the sock, I had to stop because a bunch more sawdust spilled out.

While the rest of her clothes were off, I inspected the earlier repairs that had been done. They really seemed to have been done real quick just to resell the doll or something. Yeah, some of the holes were covered up, but not very well…or at least not with a whole lot of care, I guess. I don’t know how else to describe the job that was done.

I was optimistic about the hip joints after seeing the large patches. Sadly, the outside of the hips didn’t really need patching. The inside, on the doll torso, was where the problems were and those weren’t worked on except to stuff some polyester fiberfill in there and hope for the best. I was not thrilled.

To me, repairs should be reversible for one thing. They should also use period correct materials. In other words, polyester fiberfill does not belong anywhere near antique dolls. Old rags, sawdust, sure, but not fiberfill. It just doesn’t belong. That was another clue that whoever did the repairs was just trying to get the doll out the door. The person didn’t really care what the doll was supposed to be stuffed with. At least the last doctor had used kid leather to cover the holes…I just really wish she’d done a neater job. There were two kinds of glue and the only areas that were covered were the unnecessary hip joint pieces. The other glued pieces were very sloppy. That’s why the leg was leaking so badly.

Comments are closed.