My Teddy Bear (English Edition)

Exhibition Catalogue My Teddy Bear, presented at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (4 december 2024 - 22 june 2025).

The immense popularity of the teddy bear, now in every child's bedroom, hides a paradox: how did this ferocious, wild animal come to symbolize childhood?

The teddy bear was born at the same time in two different places. In 1902, the toy was invented in the United States in reference to Theodore Roosevelt - hence its Anglo-Saxon name, Teddy's bear, which became teddy-bear. In Germany the same year, Margarete Steiff marketed her first teddy bear, created from needle cushions, which was a resounding success in Europe and America.

Since the first examples in mohair and wood straw, heavy and rigid, the teddy bear has softened and mellowed. He has been adorned in bright or pastel colors, so that he can be transformed into a cuddly toy, the transitional object studied and theorized by pediatrician Donald Winnicott.

The bear now reigns over a whole menagerie of stuffed animals, as well as children's fiction, thanks to Winnie the Pooh, Mishka and Paddington. More surprisingly, he's also a favorite of fashion designers, who don't hesitate to revisit him. Today, through the figures of the panda and the polar bear, the bear is the symbol of climate change and endangered nature.

Through five essays and three thematic notebooks, this catalog traces the history of the teddy bear, from its first steps to its transformations and successes. It also questions our relationship with bears since Antiquity. Finally, the rich iconography offers a wide range of old and more recent teddy bears, compared with man's representations of bears over the centuries.