Restored Vintage Indian Nesting Dolls - SARI LADY

£27.00

Description

Sitting alongside the on the Ganges one fine summer day, I caught sight of a man with piles of colour laden upon his head. On closer inspection I discovered he carried a burden of delightful wooden toys. Faded, battered and with chipping paint, he was taking them to the burning ghats to sell for scrap. Despite their ill repair, I was enamoured of their whimsy and, between my broken Hindi and his broken English, convinced him to save them from the ghats and sell them to me.

I searched through the assortment of odd and ends to find all five pieces of this delightful nesting doll set! Her original pattern had faded greatly and was hardly discernible on some, so I've given her a new personality with a pretty yellow sari. Every little face has a different expression - one is pensive, one is merry, and they're all lovely! In the last photo you can see her before her makeover.

After researching the traditional Benares style of toy making and apprenticing under a master toymaker, I felt confident in my ability to properly breathe new life into my beloved toys.

Using powdered pigments mixed with gloss medium, I tried to reincarnate them as closely as possible to how they might have looked in their former lives. Two layers of paint and they were good as new while still preserving some of their shabby chic.

The largest doll measures approximately five inches in height, while the tiniest is barely an inch! I've sanded the insides so they'll open and close properly, and protected the paint with a layer of clear lacquer - they're quite able to withstand the rough and tumble of small hands!

These dolls can also hold any manner of small trinkets; feed them with jewelry, fortune cookie slips, safety pins, buttons or all manners of tiny baubles. Fully recovered and ready to make new friends, this happy doll would love to brighten up any room of your house!