Last fall, we were lured to the Deutsche Teddybären Museum, in Spielzeugstadt Sonneberg (the toy city of Sonneberg) by the world’s biggest teddy bear as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. At 5.3 meters, he’s a big boy.
September 2021
The museum is located above the Martin Bären storefront, a family high-end bear-making company, now in the fourth generation. We didn’t realize this when we set out, but as we go to a lot of brand museums–BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Spam–this wasn’t a big deal. Small, but filled with cute vintage dioramas, and a room with a thousand limited-edition models. Keep in mind that Sonneberg is in Thuringia: this toy shop survived four decades of Soviet rule, and the drain of the young people to the West in the early 90s. I am impressed.
They’re really nice bears.
And mohair plus hand-stitched equals expensive bears.
A heady combination of BEARS, parsimoniousness, and hubris led to the purchase of a “make your own Martin Bear” kit, containing mohair, glass eyes, metal pins to joint the limbs, and a photocopied page of vague directions. The word Nahtzugabe (seam allowance) is completely missing, for example.
I am a person who cannot cut into “the good mohair” until I know what I’m doing. And thus Sample was born, my test of the pattern directions in cotton and acrylic.
In the following image, a life-sized scene from the museum, we see how easy it is to make bears! Even bears can do it!
September 2021
Lies! We needed four hours to stitch a leg, and a full week to figure out the shape of the head. The air was blue the entire time. You can feel the tension in the Radish workroom:
April 2022
Eventually a small bear with button eyes and no joints emerged. He is not offended by being called Sample, as many fine bears are named for their origins.
May 2022
Out of morbid curiosity, I introduced him to a bear I made around 1996 (out of a book from the library) to see if I’ve improved at all since then.
May 2022
I show a touch more sophistication in my pattern and material selection, but remain clumsy. Hrm. (Maybe not so sophisticated. Heh.)
