24.2.92: under daemon 'default' face not fully specified

[azw@fastmail.fm (Albert Z. Wang)]

Not sure if this changed at some point, but with 24.2.92 the 'default'
face is not fully specified, so the background is set to nil and spits
out

Unable to load color "nil"

in the messages buffer.  Not a huge problem generally, but the result is
that the org-hide face doesn't get set properly (which tries to detect
the background).

Works fine when just running emacs, but with emacsclient -c it does not
(when the client also starts the daemon).

I've never had this problem before -- is there something that can be
done to fix it, aside from adding extra hooks to set the org-hide face?
The manual says default face should always be fully specified.  Is there
a function to force a full re-specification of the default face?

I know that the environment under which daemon initializes is pretty
minimal, so right now I have all graphic-display setup in a
self-removing after-make-frame hook -- don't know if that makes a
difference here...

Thanks for any ideas!