#steiff bear

I wanted to get this done by Christmas but god ive been gushing over this sketch

I like toy collecting and seeing hima make nods to Margarete Steiff by showing germany’s soft side through stuffed bears makes me so happy! 

Margarete Steiff is a german seamstress who is most known for inventing the teddy bear in the late 1800′s. The first one being a stuffed elephant! Steiff is now a collector’s brand and is known widely for the bear’s little ear tags!

 I wanted to make a whole thing involving Margarete Steiff’s history and such. but im just gonna leave it here as along with a headcanon that ludwig was close to miss Steiff :)

There are over 50 patients in the hospital at the moment, many drying from their spas, so I’m taking a second to share a story of a spry elderly bear from last fall... and  no, that’s not a typo, there is only one z in Uncle Buz’s name. :-)

Uncle Buz is a 1940s Steiff jointed bear whose people wrote when he broke his arm:

As you can see, he also had some pawpad issues with his seams splitting.  And he is one of those earlier teddy bears that was fully stuffed with wood straw.  So... we decided he would come in for joint reattachment (new joint if needed) and recovering of all four paws (so his hands and feet would match).  No spa for Buz because he’s in pretty good shape so it didn’t make sense to replace his straw with modern polyfiber which can’t replicate the feel exactly.

Here’s Uncle Buz with all four paws better and his arm back on(excuse his position... it’s the only way to show all four at once):

Now it turned out when Buz arrived that he had a very weak spine seam.  He had an internal mechanism that turned his head and arms and it was pressing on his spine.  However, the seam and surrounding fur were pretty weak, so the best option was a fur/skin transplant over the injury.  Here’s that injury and the proposed transplant fur:

His people agreed and Buz had the extra surgery (but we kept all his other wear because when you’re over 70 you’ve earned it! :-)

Buz flew home and his family wrote: