Tiny Tuesday: Tiny Ted

"The world of the teddy bear is an innocent one, a world that 'gives delight and hurts not', a world that appeals to all generations and all nationalities"

Gyles Brandreth, from the foreword to "The Teddy Bear Craft Book"


This tiny model of a teddy bear is no bigger than my thumb (that's a solid silver thimble he's looking at in the picture).  I don't know much about his history, but he may be very old.  He was given to my Mum about 15 years ago, when she and Dad lived in Frinton-on-Sea, by their neighbour Margie who was nearly a hundred years old at the time.  Mum thinks Margie may have had this little teddy since she was a child, but I've no idea whether or not this is true.  Margie and her brother Ken were tiny little people themselves - both less than 5 feet tall - and both were adorable.  Despite his small stature, Ken had been the Captain of a gargantuan liner ship and had driven a huge Rolls Royce.  Margie had worked at the Gamages department store in London's Holborn as a young woman, something she had in common with my Mum who got her very first job there after World War II.  I've posted an extra photo of Gamages at around the time Margie would have worked there in the 1930's - sadly no trace of it now exists.  As both Margie and Ken passed away more than a decade ago, I shall never know the story of Tiny Ted and how Margie came to own him.