Restored Vintage Indian Doll - COUNTING RINGS

£18.00

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 stacking doll! Rings numbered one through ten stack atop each other to create this charming fellow. In the last photo you can see him before he was made jaunty and new again.

After researching the traditional Benares style of toy making an 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.

This vibrant doll has 10 stackable, numbered rings on a wooden dowel, perfect for tiny hands!

Fully recovered and ready to make new friends, this happy doll would love to brighten up any room of your house!