Repair Advice and Help
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-Which Bears to repair
-Where to get help -The Bear insides pics Not for the squeamish! |
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Investment Bears
The most important thing to stress is that, unless you are a professional Bear repairer, any attempt to fix the Bear yourself is likely to reduce the value of your bear. If you have a valuable investment bear you need to decide whether any intervention is necessary or whether to pass it on in its original state to safeguard your investment and maximize its value in the future!
Professional Repairs
If you need a professional Bear repair or restoration and are prepared to pay for it then my personal recommendation is to contact DOT BIRD of Ripon whose sympathetic restoration work on bears is legendary. Email : [email protected].
If you are a regular visitor to Hugglets you can see and talk to Dot at work in the inner foyer of Kensington Town Hall during the Hugglets BearFests in February and September.
(If you need someone nearer , you can use our contact form to get details of other advertised repairers in your area.)
Sentimental Value Bears
If you have a much loved Bear which has been with you through thick and thin and you want to pass it on to your family intact, you may think that seeking a professional repairer is a step too far. In which case minor interventions will stop your bear losing his stuffing, or a loose ear etc.
Mummy Repairs
If you do not require a professional repair then a "Mummy repair" ( so called because over the years Mothers were often called upon by their children to sew up a torn ear or replace a lost eye etc) may do the trick.
A Mummy repair is by definition an emergency darn and not expected to do more than secure the loose limb or temporary eye until it can be properly restored later. Mummy repairs are almost expected in very old bears, and some bears I have seen have collected quite a few battle scars along the way.
There are plenty of books which can take you through DIY Bear repair techniques in detail.
e.g. ISBN 1-85152-534-3 Harald Nadolny and Yvonne Thalheim : Teddy Bears- a Complete Step-by step Guide
(Restoring Teddies pp 31-39)
ISBN0-7513-0003-9 Pauline Cockrill : The Little Book of Bear Care.
NB. Please avoid any temptation to use glue ! Glue and Excelsior (wood- wool) filling do not work! And emptying a full tube of superglue into an eye socket to fix a loose eye as one youngster did recently is a recipe for disaster. (By the time I was shown it a few weeks later the bear's eye was surrounded by a congealed mess which had ripped away much of the surrounding mohair while some of the glue underneath the eye was still wet and seeping.) Needless to say, the bear had to go straight to a professional repairer for radical cosmetic surgery.
If you are asking someone to repair your much loved bear, remember to ask them to avoid "overworking" which is where the repairer tries to improve on the original as there is a very real risk that the Bear that returns will not have the same appealing identity as the old one.
( Postscript: I was asked recently to give an old blind bear some eyes, and happily obliged with a pair of glass eyes which I knotted through to the back of the head exactly in the indentations left by the originals. The owner was stunned and unnerved by the bear as it now appeared to be looking at her, and as she said it had a personality that the empty sockets had only hinted at before. So even giving a bear back its sight will fundamentally affect your relationship with your old bear!)
The Bear Insides
One question that people often ask me is - what does my old bear actually look like inside?
I am indebted to Sally F. who kindly allowed me to conduct a post mortem on her 1950s Tara Bear Eric who had suffered fatal injuries in an accident with a car door. She offered to make his organs available for transplants and very kindly allowed me to post pictures of his insides on this advice page.
Eric is an interesting Bear because in addition to a simple un-jointed mohair covered body, he has a remarkable old mouth opening mechanism achieved by pressing on his stomach and an early example of a squeaker voice box. As you can see from the pictures below Eric had already had one of his eyes replaced and so had one glass eye and one plastic stalk eye. He was also filled with the 1950s version of soft stuffing !
Professional Repairs
If you need a professional Bear repair or restoration and are prepared to pay for it then my personal recommendation is to contact DOT BIRD of Ripon whose sympathetic restoration work on bears is legendary. Email : [email protected].
If you are a regular visitor to Hugglets you can see and talk to Dot at work in the inner foyer of Kensington Town Hall during the Hugglets BearFests in February and September.
(If you need someone nearer , you can use our contact form to get details of other advertised repairers in your area.)
Sentimental Value Bears
If you have a much loved Bear which has been with you through thick and thin and you want to pass it on to your family intact, you may think that seeking a professional repairer is a step too far. In which case minor interventions will stop your bear losing his stuffing, or a loose ear etc.
Mummy Repairs
If you do not require a professional repair then a "Mummy repair" ( so called because over the years Mothers were often called upon by their children to sew up a torn ear or replace a lost eye etc) may do the trick.
A Mummy repair is by definition an emergency darn and not expected to do more than secure the loose limb or temporary eye until it can be properly restored later. Mummy repairs are almost expected in very old bears, and some bears I have seen have collected quite a few battle scars along the way.
There are plenty of books which can take you through DIY Bear repair techniques in detail.
e.g. ISBN 1-85152-534-3 Harald Nadolny and Yvonne Thalheim : Teddy Bears- a Complete Step-by step Guide
(Restoring Teddies pp 31-39)
ISBN0-7513-0003-9 Pauline Cockrill : The Little Book of Bear Care.
NB. Please avoid any temptation to use glue ! Glue and Excelsior (wood- wool) filling do not work! And emptying a full tube of superglue into an eye socket to fix a loose eye as one youngster did recently is a recipe for disaster. (By the time I was shown it a few weeks later the bear's eye was surrounded by a congealed mess which had ripped away much of the surrounding mohair while some of the glue underneath the eye was still wet and seeping.) Needless to say, the bear had to go straight to a professional repairer for radical cosmetic surgery.
If you are asking someone to repair your much loved bear, remember to ask them to avoid "overworking" which is where the repairer tries to improve on the original as there is a very real risk that the Bear that returns will not have the same appealing identity as the old one.
( Postscript: I was asked recently to give an old blind bear some eyes, and happily obliged with a pair of glass eyes which I knotted through to the back of the head exactly in the indentations left by the originals. The owner was stunned and unnerved by the bear as it now appeared to be looking at her, and as she said it had a personality that the empty sockets had only hinted at before. So even giving a bear back its sight will fundamentally affect your relationship with your old bear!)
The Bear Insides
One question that people often ask me is - what does my old bear actually look like inside?
I am indebted to Sally F. who kindly allowed me to conduct a post mortem on her 1950s Tara Bear Eric who had suffered fatal injuries in an accident with a car door. She offered to make his organs available for transplants and very kindly allowed me to post pictures of his insides on this advice page.
Eric is an interesting Bear because in addition to a simple un-jointed mohair covered body, he has a remarkable old mouth opening mechanism achieved by pressing on his stomach and an early example of a squeaker voice box. As you can see from the pictures below Eric had already had one of his eyes replaced and so had one glass eye and one plastic stalk eye. He was also filled with the 1950s version of soft stuffing !
