If you read the previous post on here, you will have seen the wonderful discovery of a rather lovely house underneath layers of modern brick and roof paper. Needless to say this sold very quickly! I was itching to have a further little scrape on this beauty of a house and the buyer confidently gave me instructions to scrape away. So, over the couple of days whilst this lovely house was waiting to be collected to embark on a new journey in its 100 year history, I scraped away on the front - primarily to try and get rid of as much of the brown undercoat splodges as I could.
With my blunt and very old craft knife (perfect for this sort of thing) I set to work on scraping....it became obsessive! The brown undercoat came away relatively easily, along with some of that grey gloss paint.
So I tested scraping a little of the grey paint from one of the upstairs windows......and it appeared to be that gorgeous terracotta paint underneath. Very excitedly I proceeded to continue scraping around all the upstairs windows...and the result was very satisfying indeed. I then tackled the downstairs windows and found simply the original yellow underneath.
So this is it folks...........what a difference!
Although you cannot really see in the photo, one can just make out the trace of black scored lines on the lower half.....just like the images in the 1912 advert of some of various different models of Swan Houses.
1912 Advert of just some of the other Swan Dolls Houses, these ones are with a flat roof unlike those seen in the previous post that had roofs. Courtesy of Marion Osborne from her A-Z Book of 1914-1941 Dolls Houses.
When my customer came to collect the house yesterday, she was both surprised and thrilled at the result. Occasionally I get rather attached to a dolls house, particularly one that I have worked on....and it was an odd feeling having to bid farewell to this lovely thing yesterday but it is most definitely in safe hands. My customer is planning to restore this further, including removing the wallpaper. We are both curious to see what is underneath although initial thoughts are that the original wallpaper has all gone, as we have peeked under side edges where we could and it appears to be bare wood. Oh well...we shall have to see.
Hope you have enjoyed looking at this lovely rare dolls house.
4 comments:
How exciting! I'll bet you've really enjoyed working on this even more - and now your customer can continue with the fun.
Rx
Hi Robin. Yes...it certainly has been a bit of an exciting find under all the relatively modern brick and roof tile paper. Houses like this just don't come along very often! Celia
Such a beautiful house - and how satisfying that it allowed you to identify the one that Sue Valentine has just bought.....
Awww...thanks Cestina for your lovely comment. I must admit, it was really great for me to see the photos of another Swan Dolls House and hope the information on here is of use to people!! Celia
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