DOLL RESTORATION AND OUTFIT DESIGN
Antique doll collecting is all the rage now. Really. And so is doll repair and restoration. We get up to twenty calls and emails a day from people requesting assistance in bringing their beloved dolls back to life. Young and old, men and women. Dolls never go out of style and are gender neutral. One of our clients is a former long haul driver who quit his job after he developed a back problem and started collecting dolls.
He buys old, damaged dolls at yard and estate sales, send them to us for restoration, and then sells them on eBay. Even though we specialize in invisible restoration, he, being a nice guy, always informs prospective buyers that the dolls have been restored. That never stops anyone from buying.
Dolls come in different materials – fabric, plastic, leather, resin, wood, bisque, porcelain. See our doll guide for more information. At Luel Restoration Studio we specialize in bisque, porcelain, and hard resin restoration. However, we offer restringing services for all different types of dolls. And we also design, cut and sew outfits for them.
Something like this:
Repair or Restoration?
On the basic level, to repair is to fix something that’s broken. Say, there’s a hole in the head and you want it repaired invisibly. We’ll only work on the head and you wouldn’t know the head was broken. We will not touch the rest of the doll.
Restoration, on the other hand, involves working on the entire doll and bringing it to its original condition. It doesn’t mean making it look new. But it does mean replacing or restoring the hair, fixing the outfit or making a new one.
These terms are not written in stone and clients use them interchangeable. As long as Luba Sokolina, our chief restorer, understands what needs to be done, words are not going to stand in her way 🙂
Whether you decide to repair or restore your doll, rest assured that the work will be performed using a conservation method, i.e. stopping the problem from getting worse or preventing the damaged are from getting damaged again in the future.
Take a look at this doll, for instance. It’s owner, Kathy M.C. from Renton, Washington, shipped the doll’s head to us. The doll belonged to her mother, but the body was missing. We did a complete restoration on the doll, literary from scratch – fixed the eyes, designed body, and created a new outfit.
Here’s the letter Kathy sent to us after she received her doll (you can find it on our Testimonials page.)
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