The Stuffed Toy Teddy Bear

More than dolls and toys, the stuffed toy teddy bear is an enduring favorite with children and adults, often serving the purpose of comforting.  Teddy bear collectors are known as arctophiles from the Greek words 'arctos' (bear) and 'philos' (lover).

The teddy bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt, from the November 1902 American President Theodore Roosevelt's gaming trip to Mississippi, to which he was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino. Several other "gamers" were competing, and most of them had already bagged something. Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered and bound to a willow tree a poor American Black Bear, after a long chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt and suggested that he bag it. He refused, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be put out of its sorrow, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a white handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter.

Morris Michtom saw the drawing of Roosevelt and the bear cub and was inspired to create a new little stuffed toy bear cub and put it in his shop window with a sign that read "Teddy's bear." The toys were a success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co.

At the same time, in Germany the Steiff firm, unaware of Michtom's bear, produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs. They exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 and exported 3000 to the United States.

By 1906 other toy and doll manufacturers had joined in the craze for Teddy Bears. Ladies carried them everywhere, children were photographed with them, and Roosevelt used one as a mascot in his bid for re-election.

Natural fibers:
Mohair, the fur shorn or combed from a breed of long haired goats, is woven into cloth, dyed and trimmed to produce a fascinating choice for any artist's palette. Alpaca teddy bears are made from the pelt of an alpaca because the fiber is too soft to weave.