I inherited these dolls from my father's cousin, who wanted to keep them in the family. They belonged to my father's great grandmother, Nellie Wetmore. There are two more or less complete dolls here, who come to me without names or further explantion; the smaller one has fractions of her original head still attached to her body. The larger doll broke at some point during her lifespan, and while I was presented with fractions of her original head, badly mended with yellowing glue of some sort, the body was given a new head of a later vintage.

Here are the two more or less complete dolls. There are two or three assorted outfits for the larger one, all nicely sewn with lace trimming and little glass buttons and everything. Unfortunately they are very much too large for the smaller doll, who needs a hat to cover her poor broken hair. The larger doll also has hands with the fingers sewn separately and a relatively interesting body construction which holds her head firmly in place. I had originally contemplated replacing the older head on the body after repairing it, but decided that actually disassembling the stitching of her body to do this was probably a bad idea. This is a pity, as I think the older head is much sweeter a face, and doesn't have the slightly newer trend of gloss glaze on doll skin or the creepy staring look.

I don't have any pictures of the original attempted mend of this head, done at unknown time with unknown substances. These pieces came to me with two halves of the face glued together at a skewed angle as if they had shifted as the glue dried, and several of the shoulder bits mended relatively accurately, but with yellowing glue and some odd yellowed crusty substance that may have separated out of the glue, or been originally another sort of adhesive. This is the pieces after they were disassembled with the help of a friend who does art conservation for a living, and is much more confident than I am about employing solvents of various sorts. The glue disovled quite nicely in warm water, but the nasty yellowed stuff had to be gently scraped out of the seams with a knife blade; in some of the later pictures you can still see the parts of it that remain on the interrior of some of the pieces.

Here are all the pieces, carefully disassembled and brought in to work, where I spent a little while cleaning up the lab in exchange for use of the B-72 to reassemble the doll. Acryloid B-72 is a non-reactive polymer which disovles in acetone to resemble clear nail polish. We use it in archaeology for under and over coats while labeling artifacts, so that the lable will not stain things like ceramics over time. It is also sometimes used for mending delicate objects, and thus was an easily obtainable and inexpensive option for reassembling a porcelain doll.

Here you can see the nasty yellowed line of the old adhesive. As it was quite firmly attached to the porcelain, I chose not to bother removing the traces of it that were not going to be visible in the reassembled doll head. It may well have been there for upwards of a hundred years, and doesn't seem to have damaged the porcelain yet, so I don't suspect its continued presence will hurt anything.

Oddly enough, there was a tiny piece left over when I finished; it is just a chip, with a bit of blushing on the outside, which goes all the way through the thickness of the porcelain. There is a nearly corresponding chip out of the doll's right cheek, but as it doesn't go all the way through the head, they clearly don't match up, and there's nowhere else to put the chip. I eventually pressed it into one of the thick lines of B-72 on the interrior of the head for safekeeping rather than attempt to carve it down to replace the chip that was missing.

Here she is, looking very victorian and plump-cheeked. The top and back of her head did not make it to me, of course, but I think she has regained some of her original charm, which is more than can be said for most ladies in their second century.