hi anissa coy here with firehouse education and uh this is our uh weekly column and uh today what we're gonna go over is how to clean a porcelain doll um isn't she pretty by the way look at her she's so gorgeous with gorgeous curls and as you can see we have lots of uh different types of fabrics and surfaces here okay so there's some really important things that i want to point out first off before i even touch the doll i did my photo inventory okay so you want to take a photograph of the doll and you want to do a full inspection so that you can see if there's any damages on here so i did and i there was only one thing damaged right here her finger is broken off so i took a photograph of that okay so i noted that so now we're ready to start the cleaning process so there's several different steps that we're going to do to clean this okay um porcelain dolls are very delicate to clean and you have to be very very careful okay they have a lot of um delicate parts on them a lot of times things on their outfits are um can come off easily their hair you have to be very careful when you're vacuuming them or blowing them off as you're gonna see with the air compressor because these curls can be pulled out or the hair frizzed out by vacuuming or using uh air to blow uh soot and dust off of them the other thing is is that they can um sometimes the hair will come out of the doll's head quite easily so you have to be careful the other thing i want to point out if i get my camera person to come in here real close is do you see the eyelashes that are on this doll these are painted on the bottom but across the top those are actually eyelashes that are glued on okay now as you can see with her she's got several pieces missing over here and she's got some pieces missing over here in the corner of this eye so that would be something else that i would note and you got to be really careful when you're cleaning the face all right so here's what we're going to do first off i'm going to take her stand off all right so the stands are usually uh gripped around the waist and then we're going to clean that separate now this is an easy clean this is a hard surface so we just wipe it down with a mild cleaner um i use score and then we would wipe it down with 99. okay so now what we're going to do with the doll is i'm going to take an air compressor and i'm going to blow off um the doll okay so i want you to be very careful when you're doing this don't use a high pressure on the air compressor so i'm just gonna push really lightly um because again you can frizz out the hair if you blow too hard so what i do is i actually i'm gonna use my fingers and i'm going to go with the air compressor and i'm going to kind of agitate her hair a little bit and blow blow it off entirely okay i'm going to do the same with the hat i'm going to get a little stronger with the air compressor on the fabric okay be very careful around the face again because of those eyelashes i don't want to blow them off okay if you are getting a lot off and you don't want to just totally kill yourself you can also hepa vacuum at the same time so i'm so see i'm gonna um i don't actually have the hepa on right now because i wouldn't you would be able to hear me but i'm using the air compressor to blow dust off as i'm vacuuming it just because um it's not gonna fly all around the soot and dust and stuff that's coming off of the stall so you're gonna do this over the whole area of the doll now that i'm done with that i'm gonna take my hepa vacuuming and i'm gonna go over the doll the entire doll and have a vacuum okay and i'm gonna start up at the top and i'm just i'm gonna just lightly touching it like this okay my hepa vacuum is nice and strong but not too strong and then at the hair you're again i'm going to use my fingers to be sure that i'm being very careful see i'm kind of holding the hair and i'm and i'm jostling it right agitating it as i've got the hepa vacuum here getting the uh smoke um and particulates and dust out of the hair okay so i'm gonna do this over the whole entire doll start from the top but work my way down flip the doll over and i'm gonna do the same thing back here okay um and see how some of her curls are already kind of pulled out see that so um that was just here before i started doing anything with the doll all right so i'm gonna vacuum every single inch of this doll i'm actually going to untie this apron and take it off so that i can do all of the doll's dress as well okay so now that i'm done with all of this the vacuuming and the air compression now what i'm going to do is she's got her little boots and her little flower pot so i'm just going to wipe these off with again my mile cleaner i don't use any crazy cleaner on this because i don't want to um take any like coloring off the boots okay these are actually little leather boots so i'm going to wipe these off with my my damp towel as well okay so once that's all done and i've vacuumed everything now i'm gonna deal with the porcelain now i don't put anything wet on the porcelain porcelain can actually etch and this makeup that is all painted on her can can come right off okay very very mild cleaner i did that one time yep took the lips right off the doll okay so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use our amazing chem sponge so you want to be very careful again remember she's got eyelashes here and you're going to want to take and i start out with a clean sponge and you're going to want to take and swipe every area on this doll's face okay notice how i'm not scrubbing i'm wiping okay i'm going to do every area i'm gonna do her uh little lashes okay really carefully in her eye so this is about very delicate tiny strokes okay and don't rub okay now i have done this to porcelain dolls and their faces are just black just covered with smoke it's it takes it right off and you're going to want to do this kim sponge on all areas of porcelain on this doll so pull back her um the the the clothing around her neck and get all of this area as well okay same with her little hands we're gonna pull the dress up a little bit we're gonna do the same with her hands remember long even strokes okay and then we're going to do the same with her feet now look at her legs um she's actually got some little sockies here if you pull them down there is some porcelain underneath here so i'm going to pull that down and then i'm going to wipe long even strokes with a kim sponge across that porcelain and then i'm going to cover it back up okay so now oh and see her little hat oh thankfully that was not attached so it did fall off okay so now that i've got her um we've used air compression blown her off we've done hepa vacuuming all over and we've got the porcelain kim sponge i'm now going to take a q-tip and i do and i'm not going to put anything wet on this um i might if i felt i needed to put a little tiny bit of just make it damp a little bit of water okay i'm not gonna put any cleaning chemicals all chemicals on her and i'm just gonna double check her little lashes make sure i'm not getting any black off i'm maybe going to kind of go around her mouth and nose areas because there's little tiny crevices here right so we want to make sure that our q-tip's coming back totally clean now when i first did this doll um this was very mild this room thankfully was not very affected um it was a very very light soot that i got off and mostly just household dust okay i'm also gonna go around the edge of her hair just make sure oh and her little ears look at how see how the ears have all that now chances are the hair covered it so there really isn't going to be on much on here but we always want to do those areas okay and do this until your q-tip comes back spotless clean like mine is okay so there was about nine dolls in this house and um we were able to clean them all thankfully um it was a really um good situation they were in the least affected room so now that i've cleaned my stand i'm actually going to put it back on her waist all right set her back up she looks good i'm going to make sure that she's all together and then i'm going to move her down to my cleaned station and um then what we're what we're actually doing to deodorize her was setting up our hydroxyl room and then i'm going to go ahead and just deodorize i'm going to leave her overnight in hydroxyl just as a little extra major she smells really good but i want to really give her that new doll smell for the homeowner and when she unpacks her she is just going to be in love with her porcelain doll all over again so i pre-tied her apron on now i've got her back in her stand after we get done with the hydroxyl um deodorization then we will log her and pack her and i pack them in their stands standing upright don't i don't ever lay the dolls down to pack them i always stand them upright and this hat will not stay on her head all right so hopefully you found this video helpful and informative when you're cleaning a porcelain doll remember it's all about tiny touches and a lot of care alright thank you so much for watching don't forget post a comment below um email me at anysetfirehouseeducation.com send me more questions for up-and-coming columns and maybe i will feature your column in or your question rather in the next video until then i thank you for watching