Do you know ....... that we owe it to the 26th president of the United States of America, Theodore, or also called Teddy Roosevelt, that the name "Teddybear" actually excists?
In november of the year 1902 this president refused, during a bearhunt, to shoot a young bear, which men had tied to a tree.
This incident was printed as a cartoon in the Washington Post by the political cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman.
Because of him the little bear became the symbol for the president.
The wife of a russian immigrant made the cartoonbear out of plush and sold it in their store. The bear became a true mania and the American Toy Compagnie was founded.
Within a year after the incident with the president, the cartoonbear was transformed into a toybear for children ....... en had become the everywhere beloved teddybear.
In 1903 Margharete Steiff took this idea with her to Germany and founded the Steiff-imperium. Another wellknown manufacturor who also still is producing teddybears in Germany is the Hermann Compagnie.
Since all those years a lot of toys have been put on the market, but there has never been anything as popular for the young as well as the old, as the teddybear.
Teddybears have personality, an uncommon quality which is very much different from all other collector's item and other toys.
A teddybear offers us cosiness and a lot of warm feelings to go with that, all qualities that every human being loves to be surrounded with.
No one is ever too old to love and hug a teddybear!
Many people still find comfort with a teddbear and let these hairy friends into their souls, even when they are adults.
The teddybear has outlived all times, good and bad.
Also during the First and Second World War, teddybears were manufactured, in factories, but also at home, made of all kinds of materials that one could get in these days: leather, jute, parachutefabric, old armycoats, a.s.o.
The teddybear can't ever be removed from our minds !
Collectors and lovers of teddybears are always looking for "old" bears.
In 1988, a 1920 Steiff-bear, called "Happy" was sold for almost € 86.220,-- to the couple Vollp in Amerika.
This family already had more than four thousand teddybears in their possession.
Apart from some large manufacturors of teddybears, there are a lot of teddybearmakers abroad, as well as in my own country, who still make their teddies by hand and sell them in shops and on exchange markets for teddybears, or just in their own "neigbourhood" through mouth-to-mouth publicity, as for my Gloria Bears.
"When a Teddybear comes into your life, he'll never leave,
...... thát's a promise !" Gloria