Welcome to Mostly Bears... The Blog: TBRH Saturday Recap & the Blog Giveaway

Dear teddy bear lovers...

The Saturday and Sunday festivities at Clarion TBRH 2010 (the ones we made it to...) are now, alas, in the past, soon to be fond memories... once we make it home, that is.

Saturday morning, the 12th of June, dawned in a torrential downpour! Yours truly opted for sweet sleep over early-morning attendance at the Pancake Breakfast at the Firehouse... so I do not know if that event even took place! I still have fond memories of '05's pancakes and was a little disappointed that I missed it. But what can you do?

By 9:30 or so, we made it to the showroom floor, an exquisite sight! Some of our favorite artists were attending and it was so fun to see what was new. Did I take photos? Of course not! I was too busy looking and (kinda) drooling :)

I did get a couple of generic shots of the showroom on Sunday and will post those in the next blog entry.

But, gentle reader, fear not! I shall recommend to you the following website for additional photos of the event... (Wayne Baldridge Photography)

My master plan was to not buy anything until I had looked at EVERYTHING. And I knew my time was short. (seeing as how we slept in on the most important day of the Reunion, and all...) The showroom would be closing very soon for the parade and the Festival In the Park. So I took a spin around... quickly... and spotted far too many AMAZING creations... then out the door and off to the town square. (Luckily, it stopped raining just in time!)

Here's a few pics from the Clarion park & Grandstand:

Lunch in the Park

Mariachi music

Arts and crafts booths

Info booth at Steve's house

From the park, we made a short trip to the Teddy Bear Museum:

Heartland Museum

Teddy Bear Museum

The late Kathy Wallace's Smithsonian Creation

Display cabinets in the Teddy Bear Museum

Shelves filled with artist bears!

(more photos from the museum in the album links below)

By then it was afternoon and we hustled back to the showroom for what I like to call "artist beartopia"...

My first adoption of the day took place at Joel Hoy's table. I had so admired Joel's auction piece the night before:

Auction piece

...and Joel's table held so many lovely dressed bears, impeccably outfitted. But the bear that jumped off the table for me was a bare bear, a classic short mohair sitting bear with gentle face, weighted just a little, with a slight bit of understuffing in the belly. Really the perfect old fashioned style bear. Joel told me he "went out on a limb" to make undressed bears... a rarity for him.... to try for this show. I picked my bear up and the deal was instantly sealed. Sometimes, you just know!

I will post photos after arriving home, as all my bears are packed safely for travel at the moment.

Next, I wandered past Jeanette Warner's table. (Nettee Bears) The bear I purchased there has a fascinating story:

In 2000, the Smithsonian Institution began making plans for a Teddy Bear Centennial Celebration, scheduled to take place in June of 2002. Many prominent artists at the time were asked to produce pieces (and many artists did, in fact, produce them) for the event. However, because of the events of 9/11, the celebration was canceled and was never rescheduled.

For TBRH this year, Steve Schutt put together a display at the Museum to honor those pieces; he collected 18 artists' creations that were supposed to have been shown at the Smithsonian event:

Joan Woessner & Renee Casey, Spirit of 76

Smithsonian artist piece

Smithsonian pieces. (Teddy Trivia in coffee can!)

Smithsonian artist piece.

Which brings me back to Jeanette Warner, the creator of the Smithsonian piece called "Teddy Trivia"! As you can see above, the prototype of Teddy Trivia is on display in the exhibit. In addition to the prototype, the artist produced a limited edition of 3 of these pieces. And I purchased #2.

My Teddy Trivia bear and coffee can came with all sorts of wonderful paperwork, explaining about the Smithsonian event, the cancellation and the story of "good to the last drop.". Can't wait to reopen the package and see all the extra goodies! Of course, I will share it here with you when I do.

And there we have it for my first day of the artist showroom! There were SO many great creations I had wanted and had to leave for another day... Pam Pontious' superb lions and roosters, Bobbie Ripperger's fabulous pandas, Diana Watts' and Kim Zeman's lovely fur bears, Denis Shaw's grizzlys... so very many talented artists!

But, before I knew it, the showroom was closed and we took ourselves out for a cool and relaxing bike ride around town. (Clarion is a GREAT bike town!)

...caught a glimpse of the requisite bears, of course: