Twenty Years Making Bears

It sometimes seems only a short time ago that I made the break from my  life of management accounts and budgets in the City and became a full time bear maker.  It was actually 20 years ago and to say that the time has flown by is no exaggeration.
I marked the 10th Anniversary year with a limited edition of 10 bears and I thought that having reached 20 I should embark on a similar project.

However for 2012 I had already committed to make 2 other commemorative editions in the early part of the year, those of you who know me well will realise that was unusual enough in itself so I didn't really want to make another "edition" during the same year.

So I came up with the notion of a special 20th Anniversary Series.  The idea is that each bear will be a different one of a kind.  Some of these bears will be remakes of older favourites, they might be special because they represented a new venture for me or simply because they are bears which I particularly liked.  Some will be a realisation I have had on my wish list for a while.  The idea is that whatever the style of the bear they will be my own very personal choice.

The first of these bears is called Higgs.    He is inspired by a bear which I made as a Christmas present for a very special friend some 11 years ago. I still often see the original bear and I have tried to capture the same friendly intelligent expression and posture of the original and he is made from the same dense swirly fur but I have chosen the rather striking dusty coral colour.  So I suppose I would say he fits into the category of a re-make of an old friend but with a surprise in the colouring.  He is called Higgs because I happened to finish him on the day the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle was announced, I am not clever enough to understand exactly what that is all about but I think the bear probably does.

I am not setting any date deadlines for these bears, I will be making them from time to time over the remainder of the year and they will only be available from me direct, through my website or at shows.

I intend to make a blog post to describe each of the special bears and I am planning a special gallery for them on the website.
The last 20 years have brought me great pleasure and taken me on many journies, I have many exciting projects already lined up and plans for many new ideas so I am looking forward to many more years growing bears but I think it is a good idea to mark the achievement of the first 20 in this way.