Although a staple of American childhood now, the teddy bear did not appear until the early 20th century:
The name Teddy Bear comes from one of American President Theodore Roosevelt's hunting trips to Mississippi... A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied to a willow tree an American Black Bear after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested he shoot it. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902...Metz has a decided highfalutin take on her sculptures:
A Brooklyn store owner, Morris Michtom, saw the drawing of Roosevelt and the bear cub and was inspired to create a new toy. He created a little stuffed bear cub and put it in his shop window with a sign that read "Teddy's bear." The toys were an immediate success...
...Like designer dog breeds, the teddy bear is a creature whose shape is dictated by social trends and the changing definition of ‘cute.’
Genus Ursulus: Teddy Skulls is a pseudo-scientific study of the morphology of skulls of teddy bears... Using a variety of store-bought teddy bears as ‘species’ source material, I am reverse-engineering what their skulls look like and the differences and similarities between ‘breeds.’ My approach is to make up evidence and document, present, and interpret that evidence in a formal manner.More photos here.
I consider the skull to be an elegant structural armature for life, something that reveals historical clues and hints at individual stories that may never be told...
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