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. If you'd like to see our latest product range, take a look at our online product catalogue.

We hope you will find this site useful and informative, and we hope you'll visit often. This website is best viewed using Internet Explorer 4 or above, at screen resolutions of 800x600 and upwards, and ideally at a colour depth of 24bit. If you have any comments regarding the site, please contact the webmaster.

We are members of the British Toymakers Guild and see the bottom of this page for the awards we have won.  

Thank you for everything! Posted Wednesday, January 3, 2024 by Bill

It is now October 2023; where has the year gone? Like many of our friends (all of a certain age) we seem to have been saying this more often these days. It has been lovely making the special, 30th Anniversary bears that were ordered, and making those commissioned by the only two shops that we supply as well. Now, there are just the orders that we already have for the next couple of months to complete and that will be it!



The website will remain up as we are always happy to help collectors to have come across one of our creations on the secondary market. Since we have made teddy bears and then the more natural looking, multi-jointed designs over the last 30 years, some pre-owned examples are now appearing in auctions, shops and on-line. We are happy to help with provenance. Please contact us by email and include some photos of what you have found, together with some including the sewn-in label plus the card one if you have it.

We have left a guide to the final prices of what we have been making over the last couple of years on the Bears page for future reference. (The price would have been dependent on size, fabric, amount of detail etc.) On the secondary market a bear is basically worth what someone else will pay for it but we have noticed that well posed, beautifully groomed examples achieve better prices.

Once again, thank you to all our collectors both from the early days and more recently. We have appreciated your enjoyment of what we have made and your encouragement has been invaluable. Whether you have one of our early teddies or a more later natural looking bear, they have all been made with quality materials and they are designed to last. We hope that they will always find themselves with people who care.

Jean and Bill

News managed by NewsPro.
 

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Fairs

Much as we used to enjoy attending fairs and meeting everyone, now that we are 80 percent retired and live in the North of Scotland, sadly, we no longer attend any. However, we still make to order.

 

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Shops

Below is a list of shops that we supply to.

• The Bear Garden (Guilford ) 01483 302581

• Teddy Bears of Witney (Exclusives only) (Witney (Oxfordshire)) 01993 706616

AWARDS

The first professional fair that we did was The Winter BearFest in 1993. Since then, Bear Bits bears have been entered in 19 competitions, so we didn’t enter every year. Whenever we have entered a competition, we have made ourselves a rule that our entry must include either a technique or change of style that we have not included in any previous competition so the entry was always a development of design or technique. Whenever we entered, we were either winners or the runners up - we always aimed for our bears to be of the highest quality and our success gave us credibility in a very competitive market.

Below is a list of the awards we have won.

2017 - The Lifetime Achievement Award at Teddy Bear Total in Munster

Awarded by Sebastian Marquardt and Glenn and Irene Jackman of Hugglets for 24 years of making many, many bears, attending fairs, and 16 years of running workshops so spreading both enthusiasm and skill! This was most unexpected as we had never thought of ourselves as having made a valuable contribution to the wonderful world of teddy bears!



2015 Golden George - Piqa was one of the final 3 nominees in the Master Class Category 5 Nature Bears and finally judged as runner up to Masaya Sato’s entry.



2014 Golden George - Polar Moon was the winner in Master Class category 5 - Nature Bears



2013 Excellence in Bear Artistry - Winner - Tableaux class



2013 French Teddy Awards - Hanging On II won second place in the Group category.



2013 Golden George - Peter was the winner again in the Realistic Bears class



2012 Excellence in Bear Artistry - Winner - Realistic Animals and Bears class with Peter, a realistic brown bear.

French Teddy Awards - Peter also won the Realistic Bears class in this competition!



National Teddy Bear Artist Awards – Winner – Teddy Bear Friends Class with a very special Hare (hares are a new development and since the first one, late 2011, we have been tweaking the pattern to improve it). We were awarded 2nd place in the Panda Class for our 40cm alpaca panda, including a subtle open mouth (this was the first time we had used our open mouth design on a bear smaller than 56cm). Please see the 2012 archive and the Bears page (click top right of this page)



2011 National Teddy Bear Artist Awards – Winner – Natural Bear Class and BEST IN SHOW!! Arthur (see 2011 Archive) was made from an extremely luxurious, very dense, plush fabric – 30mm long pile, with a lot of movement and a contrasting mid brown mohair was been used for his muzzle and inner ears, blended with subtle airbrushing. Arthur’s nose was embroidered in a more complex way than usual and he had an open mouth.



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.



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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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.

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.