From November 2025 to June 2026 Morven, Liz, Vicky, and Kate, four postgraduate conservation students at University College London (UCL), worked to assess and treat four dolls that had recently been acquired by the Museum. They have written about the treatment process and their experiences.

In 1968, the St John Ambulance Association and St John Ambulance Brigade were merged into St John Ambulance. To commemorate this event, a family with a long association with the Brigade’s Oxford Division created a set of dolls that were posed in scenes representing significant events in the Order of St John’s history. These dolls remained with the family before being donated to the Museum and finding their way into the conservation lab at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, where four of the six that were sent over were selected by students (us!) for conservation treatment.

Three of these dolls, treated by Morven, Liz, and Kate, belonged to a diorama depicting Queen Victoria granting the Order of St John a Royal Charter in 1888.

Morven’s doll is dressed to represent a medieval-era member of the Order, wearing a supra vest and cloaked in a fur coat adorned with an eight-pointed cross and heraldic elements.

Liz’s doll is dressed to represent a nurse from the St John Ambulance Brigade at the turn of the 20th century, with a white apron over a black dress, a black cloak, and a lace-trimmed bonnet.

Kate’s doll is dressed to represent members of the St John Ambulance Brigade at the turn of the 20th century, wearing a black uniform with white piping, a white belt, and a brimmed hat.

The fourth doll, treated by Vicky, was part of a diorama of mid-20th-century Nursing Cadets from the Oxford Division treating casualties. The doll is dressed to represent a Nursing Cadet of the same time period, with a grey dress, cropped grey cape, and white fabric cap.

As can be seen from the above pre-treatment images, the primary concern across all dolls was the partial or complete detachment of head and arms from the body. These had once been held together with an elastic band, however the elastic had deteriorated significantly and snapped in most cases. How we were to reconstruct the dolls was a constant point of discussion throughout the treatment process. In the end, we used a few threads of cotton twill tape which tied around their torso. This still made use of their internal mechanisms, avoided using adhesive, and was an inert, conservation-grade material which would have no lasting impact on the dolls themselves.

The dolls all had dust and dirt across their clothes and plastic bodies. Dry microfibre cloths and brushing were used to clean the plastic body and faces, and a museum vacuum with brush attachment was used to clean clothing items. Microfibre cloths lightly dampened with water were the most effective at removing stubborn dirt and grime from the plastic surfaces.

Kate and Morven’s dolls had noticeable yellowed adhesive that had been used to attach hair and facial hair to the dolls’ heads. Analysis of this adhesive confirmed that some sort of solvent would be most effective in removing it, however plastics and solvents do not work well together; it would be even more damaging to attempt to use solvents (especially in the quantity needed) to remove the adhesive. Instead, cotton wool soaked in hot water was applied to the adhesive, and the heads then wrapped in cling film to retain heat, softening the adhesive and allowing it to be scraped off with a scalpel and minimise its disfiguring effects.

Final touch-ups included painting areas of the faces where original paint had been lost, creating plastic stands to allow the dolls to stand on their own, and snugly repackaging them for their journey back to the Museum.

The treatment of these dolls ended up being among the most enjoyable from our lineup of objects this year. Being able to bounce ideas off one another, as well as learning about the surprisingly fickle nature of plastic objects, gave us the opportunity to be creative with treatment decisions and take in information from a wider breadth of sources than with some of our other objects. Plastic was not a material most of us had thought about prior to our studies, and so the opportunity to think through these objects and find solutions was particularly useful for a future where more and more objects being accessioned into museums are often made of plastic. We are extremely grateful to the Museum for entrusting these lovely dolls to us and are excited to see them take their place among the Museum’s Collection!