News Headlines:
EBay warning !!!!! - Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Bear Bits Abroad - Friday, April 18, 2008
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Welcome to the online home of Bear Bits, the premier source of beautiful, award winning, realistic bears designed and made by the internationally renowned team of Jean And Bill Ashburner who specialise in their exceptional natural designs for polar bears; Asian moon bears; pandas; black, brown and grizzly bears etc. as well as the occasional Rare Bits (the bunnies) and a few traditional teddy bears.
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We are members of the British Toymakers Guild and see the bottom of this page for the awards we have won.
EBay warning !!!!! Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2008 by Bill
WARNING
There is a Bear Bits bear – Othello – made by us in 1999/2000 being offered for auction on ebay - item 180236962715.
The nose has definitely been altered – we have NEVER made a bear with a solid nose – and the eyes look rather strange and we’re sure that they are not as original too.
 
Othello is the edition made of the black bear in our winning British Bear Artist Awards group entry in 1999 and by coincidence there of even a photo of him in the retrospective article about us the current (May) issue of Teddy Bear Club International.
Please do not bid for this bear.
If you check our web site regularly, you might remember this from early 2007 - could it be from the same source???
Bear Bits Abroad Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 by Bill
After the excitement of Kensington, introducing all the new designs, we settled down to making orders and replacing stock. The next important date on our calendar was the Big Bear Fair in France – La Grande Ourse – when we pack two big suitcases (each with the all important wheels), one containing all the bears, table covers, receipt books etc. and the other our clothes and head to the Cčvennes. The little village of Arpaillargues and the nearby medieval town of Uzes are about 30 km from Nimes, 45km from Avignon. We’d end up only taking about 3 or 4 if we flew, so we go by train from St Pancras and with the speed of Eurostar and the TGV arrive in Avignon about 7 hours later, then we hire a car.
This year the weather was kind – glorious sunshine a lot of the time and you knew that you were in the south, but there was a cool wind in the background. The English were in shirts, T-shirts, flimsy tops – in Uzes many of the locals were walking around in jumpers and anoraks!
The bears don’t mind what the temperature is like but they were happy to be out of the suitcase and displayed on the stand; it wasn’t long before hall in the toy museum took on all the character of a bear fair. We also had to display our competition entry in one of the glass cabinets in the entrance hall. The theme this year was “love” and I’d decided that we’d do a play on mother love but had misunderstood the specifications. I understood the rules to say that the bear must not be more than 41cm (16 inches) and so thought that I must design around that size – if the mother is only 16 inches then the cub would have to be very small! (That would push us.)
After a few experiments and prototypes we produced Maia (mother) and Paavali (small) who each had magnets in their paws and so could cling to each other. They can be posed in many different ways (see them in the products section) but after a bit of consumer research (via good friends and their work colleagues) decided on that the less dramatic but very one was best and that was what we used – having first taken a trip into the French countryside to procure a piece of Garrigues limestone!
Visitors to the fair are given voting forms and asked to decide which they like best. The fair is over two days and on the second day there are a lot of families, so children vote too! And the winner was:
Christelle Dupre (De Lin a L’Ours) of France but WE, Bear Bits came second. Third prize was won by Dawn Slaughter (Dawn, Dusk and Midnight) so the Brits did ok!!
Thanks to some very lovely friends we were lent an apartment in Cannes for a few days after the fair where we had a lovely relaxing time even though we did not blow the profits on hiring a yacht to sail over to St Tropez for lunch, renting a DB9 to drive the roads of the Alps Maritimes or even buying a blue handbag, a snip at 14000 euros!
Now it’s back home and making stock for Teddy Bear Total – this time next week we’ll be there!
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Fairs
Below is a list of shows and fairs that we will be attending in the forseeable future.
- Devon Bear Fair (Exmouth Pavillion) Sunday May 18th 2008
- Teddy Bear artist Event (Civic Hall, Stratford-Upon-Avon) Sunday 8 June 2008
- My Friends & Me, Summer event (My Friends & Me, Leesburg, Virginia, USA) Saturday 21st June 2008
- Teddies 08 (Kensington Town Hall) Sunday 14th September 2008
- Cornwall Christmas Bear Fair (Lostwithial Community Centre (Cornwall)) Sunday 23rd November 2008
- St Andrews Crafts and Gifts (St Andrews Town Hall, Fife, Scotland) Saturday 29th November and Sunday 30th November 2008
Shops
Below is a list of shops that we supply to.
- The Bear Shop (Exclusives only) (Colchester and Norwich)
01206 577345 (Colchester) 01603 766866 (Norwich)
- Teddies Den (Lincoln)
01522 512333
- My Friends & Me (Market Station, 118 South Street, Leesburgh, VA 20175. USA)
(0703) 777 8222
- The Bear Garden (Guilford )
01483 302581
- Teddy Bears of Witney (Exclusives only) (Witney (Oxfordshire))
01993 706616
- Abracadabra Teddy Bears (8A Cross Street, Saffron Walden, Essex)
01799 527222
AWARDS
In the current, highly competitive, bear market we’ve noticed that many other bear artists have a page of their website displaying awards that they have either won or in which they have been nominated; additionally phrases such as “award winning” are used on advertisements. Apart from announcing a result at the time, we haven’t done much in the “trumpet blowing” department but maybe the time has come?!
Jean has been making bears on a full time basis since 1993, joined by Bill late 1995/early 1996 and Bear Bits has entered nine competitions during these 14 years and have been winners or runner up in all of them. Whenever we have entered a competition we have made it a rule that our entry must include either a technique or change of style that we have not included in any previous competition and therefore we have not necessarily entered something every year - thus the 1996 entry “A week of Bears” included Wednesday’s Bear – a natural looking bear in tipped fabric with printed pads and claws and in this year’s “I’ve got a secret” with Maks and Minim, the 8in (20cm) Minim was the smallest natural looking bear with a double neck joint, drop paws with proper pads that we had made to date.
Below is a list of the awards we have won.
1996 British Bear Artists Awards – Winner - Group Class 12-17in – A Week of Bears. (7 different styles and sizes of bears including a teddy bear, a character bear, a ballet dancing bear, a panda, a bent legged bear and a realistic bear.
1997 British Bear Artist Awards – Nominated/Finalist - Group Class 17in and above – Stuff and Nonsense. (Stuff – a large life-like bear with a realistically embroidered nose, Trapunto pads and very natural looking long claws – Nonsense – a 1920’s “flapper” with eyelids, eyelashes, a feather boa and head dress.
1999 British Bear Artist Awards – Winner – Group Class 12-17in – A Celebration of Bears (4 natural bears – black bear, grizzly, polar and panda – each with a double neck joint and an asymmetric joint in each ankle so they could each sit, stand, kneel and lie out)
1999 British Bear Artist Awards – Nominated/Finalist – Individual Class 12-17in – Panda (An accurately marked panda with double neck joint)
2001 British Bear Artist Awards – Runner up – Group Class 12-17in Ice Bear Family (A mother polar bear with 2 cubs all with double neck joints, drop paws, wrist joints and 3D pads. The mother polar had a more complex detailed embroidered nose than previously.
2002 British Bear Artist Awards – Winner – Group Class 17in and above – Where’s my Teddy? (A large brown mother bear with 2 smaller cubs, all very detailed and a 4in teddy bear.
2002 British Bear Artist Awards – Winner – Individual Class 17in and above – The Caramel Bear (a large light brown bear with wrist and ankle joints, needle sculpted 3D pads, a very complex embroidered nose, fabric dyed on the reverse to reveal the darker shading where the pile was trimmed on head and inner ears)
2004 Readers Choice Awards, Teddy Bear Scene – Winner – Bare Bear Class – Safety Zone (A mother polar bear and her cub - the cub was the smallest to date with a realistically embroidered nose, a double neck joint, wrist joints and 3D pads)
2006 Readers Choice Awards, Teddy Bear Scene – Winner – Bare Bear Class – Happiness is a Hug (A large detailed realistic bear with airbrushed shading, holding a 4in teddy and a 4in bunny in its paws)
2007 Readers Choice Awards, Teddy Bear Scene – Winner – Bare Bear Class – I’ve got a Secret (Maks - a large, fully detailed realistic bear made from long pile cream synthetic faux fur with black mohair inserts to the muzzle and inner ears and needle sculpted pads and 8in Minim – the smallest realistically shaped bear with double neck joint and proper paw pads made by us to date.
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