Magic Moment

 

Magic Moment

While I was hunting through the old photographs I mentioned in my last post, I started to sort through the many teddy bear magazines I have collected over the past thirty years and I came across this copy of the 'Teddy Bear Times' magazine...

I couldn't help but smile to myself... seeing the cover again took me right back to 1997 and the early days of my bear-making career. Having one of my teddy bears published as cover star on a national teddy bear magazine for the very first time was thrilling!

'Gently', a very large teddy bear with a beautiful, gentle face, was featured on the front cover of Issue 45. I had taken the photograph myself, then sent it to the magazine, together with several others... and they chose to use Gently on the cover! It was a wonderful compliment to my bears and in those pre-internet days, very exciting to rush hotfoot into town to see the copies displayed for sale in our local High Street shops!

Bear Beginnings, Auntie Bears

Bear Beginnings

I have been hunting out old 'Auntie Bears' photographs from the 1990's... this photo was snapped at 'The Big Bear Show' in the Business and Design Centre, Islington, London in 1998...

Back in my early bearmaking days, teddy bear photographs were taken on an old SLR 35mm film camera and developed at the local printers. Sharing new work was a much longer-winded process than it is today...digital cameras and mobile phones have made the process of distributing photographs so much faster. However, it has also made it even more important to remember to document my bears because digital pictures are so easily lost and forgotten.

For the past twenty years, I have always made an annual photobook of my designs. I keep the books lined up neatly on my workroom shelf and enjoy referring back to them regularly when I am designing new bears. It is a lovely document of how my teddy bears evolved over the years and one day, I hope my grandchildren will enjoy these portfolio books and take a sense of pride in their Nana's 'work'. 

It occurred to me recently, that my earliest designs weren't ever made into a photo album and neither was the 'Auntie Bears' story...

The 90's was a very special time for hand crafted teddy bears in the United Kingdom, re-igniting a nostalgic passion for teddy bears in collectors who had loved them as children and lighting a flame of creativity in many aspiring bearmakers. Prior to the age of the internet, teddy bears became established as an art form in the UK in the early 1990's, designed and created with dedication and love by bear artists in their own homes, then sold through shops and at specialist teddy bear fairs across the country. 

It was an exciting time to become a new bearmaker. There were so many creative challenges... learning to run one's own business effectively, fulfilling the desire to produce quality teddy bears to share with collectors, establishing a market for them and helping secure their heritage for future generations. Creating 'artist bears' for adult collectors quickly became an all-encompassing passion for me, one that I have never tired of and probably never will.

In those days showcasing work was an important element of growing a small business and developing new ideas, so participating in specialist competitions hosted by magazines, seemed a sensible path to take, if I wanted validation for my teddy bear designs. I pushed forward with what I considered exciting new bear designs and despite being in complete awe of my fellow competitors, braved entry into the British Bear Artist Awards in 1997, 1998 and 1999, achieving recognition instantly when my submissions were honoured with awards.  It was a heady time!  Suddenly my bears were invited overseas, exhibited in museums, featured in magazine articles. My order book quickly filled and my telephone didn't stop ringing at all hours. My bears had arrived on the worldwide teddy bear stage!

Auntie Bears was the banner under which my sister Fiona and I sold the bears we designed and made individually. We both loved creating big bold teddy bears and were great friends, besides being good sisters. In fact, it was Fiona who launched our bear-making journey by one day by showing our work to the owners of 'The Rochester Bear Shop'. We were then invited to exhibit at our very first local bear show, hosted by the shop and our bearmaking path was set. Going forward, we shared costs, attended shows together and planned marketing strategies as sisters, working hard to establish 'Auntie Bears' and find our niche in the heart of the teddy bear industry.

So, back to my dusty photographs! I was looking for my earliest teddy bear designs to begin making a book of my earliest work but of our four years as Auntie Bears, I could only find a couple of small slip albums holding photographs. Unfortunately many of my original photographs were disposed of when I moved house in 2007; caught up in the fast paced age of the internet, it didn't occur to me back then, I might find a purpose for those old photographs in the future...

Thankfully, whilst searching for photographs, I also came across boxes of old teddy bear magazines and found many of the articles featuring Auntie Bears and our work as teddy bear designers. Happy memories that made me smile all over again almost thirty years later, reminding me of long forgotten moments in my own teddy bear making history. It was a magical time to begin a bearmaking business and one I now plan to document properly...  I am so glad I kept those magazines!

It hardly seems possible I have now been making teddy bears for the best part of thirty years. Those thirty years have seen many changes in the bear making world, the most significant being the use of the internet to reach out to collectors around the world. These days information can be made available instantly at the press of a button, which is amazing but I do sometimes wonder whether the internet can ever truly convey the dedication to creating teddy bears and many hours of work and skill involved in their production... the passion behind their evolution. I do hope so.

Sadly we have seen the demise of many specialist teddy bear publications, teddy bear shows, shops and competitions worldwide in recent years and yet, collectors still love teddy bears and creators still need to express themselves through the art of their creation. Hopefully, that love and dedication always be sufficient to protect the teddy bear both as an art form and also as a friend, in the disposable digital world in which we now find our much loved Teddy Bear.

A stitch in time

 

A stitch in time

I think I was about five years old when I was given my first pair of knitting needles and a ball of pink yarn. Even now, at the age of almost sixty-two years, I can remember sitting with other children around a table at school, needles held clumsily in hand, trying to knit a pink square under the eagle eyed tuition of a teacher. As the somewhat wonky square slowly began to form, peppered with dropped stitches, I felt the seed of a sense of accomplishment...

I was never a natural handicraft student. My mum, a talented knitter, tried to teach me but my hopeless lefthandedness (referred to rather unflatteringly as 'cackhandedness' in those days) tested her patience considerably. At the age of twenty, with the birth of my first child imminent, I picked up a pair of knitting needles once more and borrowed an instruction book from mum, determined to make a few snuggly baby clothes to take into hospital for the arrival of my baby. It was a battle, but somehow, I managed to produce a fairly successful pair of booties, a couple of cardigans, a bonnet and a little matinée jacket. Dressing my new daughter in her first hand knitted clothes to bring her home a couple of days later, was a very special moment for me as a new mum, wrapping her with love, protection and warmth, to begin our new life together.

Since that moment in 1983, I have often knitted gifts to welcome new family babies, initially clothes and toys for my nieces and more recently, toys, cardigans and jumpers for my Grandchildren, Great Nieces and newest addition, my brand new Great Nephew. I have even knitted cosy jackets to keep my daughter's little Chihuahua warm in the winter and of course, have made many woollen scarves, jumpers and hats to accessorize the teddy bears I create.

I love the process of creating something from a simple ball of yarn or piece of cloth. Weaving and sewing basic materials into something I picture in my mind's eye, is a magical process. Using skills passed from generation to generation, lends me comfort and a sense of perpetuity and purpose as I fashion items by hand. Each stitch is a marker of this knitter's history and skills honed over many years.

I read that the very first knitted objects found were socks, *created in Egypt in the 11th Century. The earliest known knitted items found in Europe were made by Muslims employed by the Spanish Christian Royal Families in the 13th Century. Knitting became popular in Europe in the 14th Century, with hand knitted items found by archeologists in major cities such as London.

I was fascinated to learn that knitting schools were created in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly in Scotland and in the coastal regions of England, their aim to help provide income for the poor. Hand knitting was an empowering skill for the lower classes, who knitted not only to clothe their families but also to earn payment. They knitted coarse hose from wool with large needles for themselves and fine stockings with tiny metal needles, to sell to aristocracy.

The craft of knitting was probably introduced to the continent by Egyptian Coptic Monks, passing on the knowledge that cloth could be woven from sheep wool, its dense, waterproof properties suitable for keeping people warm and dry. Knitting was a skill that itself was subsequently woven through many centuries of knitting, both for practical purpose and for pleasure. So many knitters, in so many countries around the world, over so many centuries, creating garments, blankets and toys from yarn, developing their own techniques and stories to pass on to future generations...  and importantly, to trade with. Knitting really is an incredible handicraft when you think about its broad history!

My mum used to enjoy knitting Aran garments and I inherited her passion for these complicated patterns. The history of these beautifully intricate, warm and essentially practical garments, is fascinating... *"From its origins, the Aran sweater has been intimately linked to clans and their identities. The many combinations of stitches seen on the garment are not incidental, far from it. They can impart vast amounts of information to those who know how to interpret them. Aran sweaters were, and remain, a reflection of the lives of the knitters, and their families. On the Aran islands, sweater patterns were zealously guarded, kept within the same clan throughout generations. These Aran sweaters were often used to help identify bodies of fishermen washed up on the beach following an accident at sea." Guernsey and Fairisle knitting patterns, also full of history and an expression of local culture, are similarly fascinating patterns, each a wonderful record of British island heritage. I for one, wish schools would return to teaching students about this rich history, to help instill within them a sense of pride in the continuity in British handicrafts. It will be a crying shame if such skills and timeless traditions become lost to us as a result of a fast moving, disposable, technological age.

Now for a little knitting continuity of my own...The dolly pattern in the photograph was designed by my favourite knitted toy designer Jean Greenhowe, sadly no longer with us. From the 1960's Jean wrote beautifully accessible, detailed knitting patterns, always full of fun and passion for toy making. I first discovered Jean's patterns when my children were very young in the 1980's. My sister and I loved to create the toys Jean designed for our children and over the years, I have since collected most of Jean's pattern booklets. I first made 'Emily' dolly (shown in the inset pic wearing lilac) almost twenty years ago, for a niece's birthday. Last year, I decided to make myself a knitted 'Emily' dolly, to celebrate Christmas with. I thought it would be nice to sit her in my lounge by the Christmas tree. Unfortunately I didn't quite finish her in time for the big day, but rather than give up, finished her in the New Year instead. I adjusted the pattern slightly to give my own 'Holly Dolly' a festive theme for Christmas and was very happy with how she turned out, so rather than pack her away for next Christmas, I popped her on the sideboard next to my antique sewing machine and will keep her on display all year round....

That is, unless my Granddaughter, who has fallen in love with this sweet dolly, snaffles her first!


*For further reading sources on the history of knitting, please visit these websites:


https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-history-of-hand-knitting
https://www.jeangreenhowe.com/design2.html
https://knitlikegranny.com/knitting-history/
https://www.hayzedmagazine.com/fashion/a-brief-history-of-knitting-in-the-uk/
https://www.aran.com/our-history-the-story-of-aran
https://www.yarnpalace.com/the-history-of-knitting-from-ancient-times-to-modern-trends