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Meet the Teachers!
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Ted Menten
... Faculty of Bears Instructor |
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When your name is Ted all the clever relatives fill your crib
with Teddy Bears. I'm an only child but I grew up surrounded
(almost buried) by Teddy Bears. I didn't collect them -- I
accumulated them. I was born in 1932 and grew up in the
Greenwich Village section of New York City. I'm the child of two
stunt pilots. Actually, my mother was a wing walker. My baby
sitters were poets and painters and other exotic neighbors. My
grandmother, Nana Laura, lived with us. She collected Madame
Alexander dolls and Steiff Teddy Bears. Every Saturday we
boarded the double-decker Fifth Avenue bus and headed uptown
from Washington Square to FAO Schwarz where she would interview
dolls and bears in a long, involved process that often took
hours. Then, armed with newly adopted dolls and bears, we went
across the street to have lunch at the Palm Court of the Plaza
Hotel. It was not exactly a Brady Bunch household that I grew up
in
It has been a long and fascinating journey and I am grateful to
all the Teddy Bears that kept me company along the way.
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At 22 I became the creative director of Helena Rubinstein
cosmetics and after that I went to Paris to work for Houbigant
Perfumes as a packaging and advertising designer. Later I formed a
design company in New York City and created packaging for many
cosmetic companies. Hasbro Toys hired my company to design and style
a doll line called THE WORLD OF LOVE and that took me into the world
of toy design. For several years I worked as a free-lance toy and
doll designer. In 1982 I was commissioned to write a book about
Teddy Bears by an editor who thought I had the perfect background
for the project. That was the beginning of my journey with Teddy
Bears. My first book, The Teddy Bear Lovers Catalog, was followed in
1984 by a little cartoon book called The World According to HUG.
Later, the North American Bear Company produced a series of plush
bears based on the HUG character and he later became the national
spokes-bear for SAVE THE CHILDREN. At the same time I had been
writing a Teddy Bear column for DOLLS magazine and the publisher
asked me to create a Teddy Bear magazine. So, I headed up a creative
team that produced Teddy Bear Review magazine. From the beginning,
my focus was on artist created bears and I featured them on the
covers and in stories and galleries inside the magazine. In 1986 I
created a line of Teddy Bears patterns and kits and that quickly led
me into making bears of my own design. Since then I have made
hundreds of bears, authored over twenty-five books about Teddy
Bears, and taught bear making around the world. I was even
commissioned to create three-foot tall bears for a museum in Kobe,
Japan.
The bears have taken me on many adventures since those early days in
my crib. I have met wonderful people along the way and hope to meet
many more.
From the very beginning, long before I made my first bear, I
encouraged artists to experiment with the shapes of their bear's
heads, bodies, arms and legs. I featured articles about it in Teddy
Bear Review, showcased artists who did experimental work, and always
stressed the importance of becoming a unique artist in my classes.
Perhaps my greatest reward has been watching an artist discover
their own special bear come to life from their imagination. |
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