They had collected dust for years and fallen victim to mice as they lay helpless and forgotten in somebody’s attic. Fur was missing. Teeth marks dotted their eyes. Time had literally beaten the stuffing out of them.
Once treasured companions, these stuffed animals appeared doomed for the trash bin.
Sarah Hunt could not bear the thought.
“Of course, they were worth saving,” exclaims Hunt, incredulous that there could be any doubt. “We’re talking about teddy bears! Is there a teddy bear that isn’t worth saving?”
Those partial to Barney or Big Bird, please bear with us.
Hunt, 24, is a California teddy-bearmaker who owns 200 teddy bears and once paid $900 for one. But, she said, “anybody who ever fell asleep with a teddy bear in their arms might feel the same way.”
So when your teddy bear loses its ear, its nose, its eye-everything but its charm-who you gonna call?
The teddy bear doctor.
“People will pay almost any price to repair a bear that’s been in the family for years or one that’s an antique,” says Tom Fletcher, a St. Paul toymaker who repairs antique bears. “There was an auction out East in which somebody paid $70,000 for a bear that supposedly belonged to a Russian royal family. So $250 is not a high price to pay for repairing a bear made in the 1920s.”
Fletcher’s customers think nothing of paying him $50 just to clean one of their antique teddies. That two-week process involves ridding the bear of bugs, dust, stains and odors.
Repairing antique bears is a more complicated art.
“It’s not just the hours and hours of mending,” says Jo Ann Johnson, a teddy bear repairer from Three Rivers, Mich., who writes a column for Teddy Bear and Friends magazine. “I do a ton of research. . . . Old mohair or wool must be treated delicately. Dyes must be matched. Voice boxes are replaced. . . . At $10 an hour, that sounds like a lot. But that’s what the owner wanted.”
Owners of antique teddy bears are not the only ones who cannot bear to part with their beloved companions. Customers of An Emporium Too, a St. Paul store specializing in teddy bears and bear products, often seek teddy bear doctors for contemporary teddy bears.
Some of those bears become collectors’ items a few years after they are bought. Bears made by the German company Steiff are considered treasures among collectors. And the North American Bear Co. of Chicago has retired several teddy bears in its VIB line, making them hot commodities.
What collector could resist teddies with such names as Cyrano de Beargerac, Zsa Zsa Gabear, Kareem Abdul Jabear, Bear Mitzvah and Charles Lindbearg? And some owners apparently feel compelled to repair a damaged Scarlett O’Beara or Douglas Bearbanks.
Johnson, who began repairing dolls in 1971, said her business did not “take off” until a decade later, when she started repairing teddy bears. “When they’re repaired, they become more alive.”
Stuffed-animal surgeons
Teddy bear repair is rare, but Teddy Bear and Friends suggests these stuffed-animal surgeons:
– Sally Winey, Winey Bears, 504 9th St., New Cumberland, Pa. 17070; 717-774-7447.
– Jo Ann Johnson, 10774 Harder Rd., Three Rivers, Mich. 49093; 616-244-5837.
– Barbara Lauver, R.D. 2, Box 512, Annville, Pa. 17003; 717-865-3456.
