Teddy Bear UnNatural History: Origin Story

Teddy bear skulls came into being because they were the perfect marriage between subject matter and material, inspired by natural history and imagination.

Ursulus melias and source teddy bear 'Melia'; wool on steel stand, 4.25" x 6" x 5.5", 2015. Commissioned piece.

I make teddy skulls by needle felting wool into firm, dense felt. I stab at loose, fluffy wool with sharp, notched felting needles to tangle and shape the fibers into the shapes I want - making the component parts, and joining them together through still more stabbing. 

Ursulus teodorus ruxpinus in progress, 2014. Commissioned by the National Centre for Craft & Design, U.K.

As a classically-trained sculptor who simply stumbled across the technique of needle felting and learned via a book, I experimented with the process to see what I could (and possibly couldn’t) do with it. I decided to challenge myself with creating a sheep skull out of sheep’s wool. The smooth planes and crisp edges, angles and holes of a skull seemed particularly unsuited or opposite to my newly discovered medium, and I wanted to embrace and explore that contradiction. I also liked the idea of making the hardest part of a creature out of its softest part; it tickled my weird sense of humor. 

It was 2003 and the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park opened an exhibition all about skulls. I drove from San Jose to San Francisco to draw directly from a specimen skull, since that’s my favorite way to learn all about a three-dimensional form. That trip to my favorite museum was crucial: besides studying the sheep’s skull, I also spent a lot of time looking at the big glass case full of skulls of domestic dog breeds with all their human-driven extreme characteristics. Elongated noses, foreshortened noses, large eyes, bulging foreheads, strong jaws, underbites; all the physical features that have come to characterize different breeds were the result of mutations emphasized through selective breeding. And along with cuteness and specific abilities in dogs come health problems- here’s an article that goes into selective breeding problems in dogs.  To me it’s fascinating, alarming, and exciting all at once.

Later as I looked at my sheep skull drawing and poked and poked and poked at my felt version I was thinking about how we humans influence the other life forms around us.

Frontal view of my ‘Sheep Skull’ sculpture; note how the left half is loose, fluffy, and indistinct, while the right half is tight, smooth, and detailed. 2003. Private collection.

That led to subsequent sculptures of ridiculously overbred farm and domestic animals: a grazing animal with no head, a legless lap dog, a meat source with no bothersome senses. But it took another couple years before it struck me that a teddy bear would have a skull made of felt: firm but squishy, and, like a dog, shaped by human desire. 

The desire for something cute, cuddly, tame, and soothing. A teddy bear skull made of felt. The perfect fit.

I drew a grizzly bear skull in profile from an animal anatomy book, then made the outline of a teddy bear head with a rounded, bulging forehead, small muzzle, big eyes, and rounded ears. I sketched how the equivalent skeletal anatomy would fit inside those outlines. My first drawings didn’t include ears, of course, since ears are made of cartilage, not bone. I started in on a felted wool teddy bear skull based on my drawing– and realized that it didn’t particularly ‘read’ like a teddy bear. What did it need? Ears! Adding the ears provided a quick clue for the viewer, regardless of its inaccuracy. I decided that, since I was making up fake anatomy anyway, I could add ears to the skull. 

My original drawing, circa 2005, of a teddy bear skull- based on a grizzly skull, and altered to fit within the outline of a classic teddy bear profile.

Thanks to those ears, together with its sharp little teeth, the first teddy bear skull I made was a success: it accurately communicated the concept of a real scientific specimen of an unreal creature. It was a little more on the fierce and unsettling side of the creepy/cute divide, but it was a good starting point.

Teddy Skull, wool, 9 x 7 x 10 inches, 2005. Private collection.

Sometimes materials, ideas, and inspiration come together in ways that just seem right, and even obvious. Yet until I was in that particular stage of my particular life, I never conceived of such a thing. And I still haven’t found any teddy bear skulls by anyone else that predate mine. Do you know of the existence of teddy bear skulls before 2005? I’m very curious to know if there were others out there (you can comment below).

After that I went out and bought a selection of teddy bear ‘specimens’ at a thrift store so I could reverse-engineer what their variety of skulls would look like inside… more on that soon.