Adding a finishing touch to Leonora

Hello, and welcome to my About Me page.

My name is Christine Pike and I have been making bears professionally for nearly 12 years.  In that time I have been honoured with several awards for my work and have been priviledged to travel to Europe and the USA to sell my bears and meet with wonderful collectors and artists from around the world. 

In addition to being a full-time bear artist, I am a freelance journalist and write for many hobby publications in the UK and US in cluding a regular column for Teddy Bear Review, and am a feature writer for my local newspaper; the Isle of Wight County Press.  Time permitting (!) I also enjoy illustrating designs for greetings cards.

Mischa - OOAK

My passion and appreciation for bears began while I was still at school, when I fell in love with a centre-seam Steiff I saw in a library book.  After leaving university, where I studied English, I took a number of dead end, unsatisfying jobs - until it dawned on me that what I really wanted to do was to become self-employed and make bears for a living.

I was lucky to gain a good reputation for my work early on, because I was doing something very different at the time.  My first bears had faces of hand-sculpted resin and they caught the eye of the Editor of Hugglets magazine (sadly, now folded), who was kind enough to feature them in a subsequent issue.  From there, I went on to create my well-known style of bear with an open mouth with a few teeth showing, and sculpted nose and eyelids.

Recently, I have begun to concentrate more on the eyes of a bear; frequently painting my own and making them the focal point of my work.  I make bears in sizes ranging from 5" to 25", most of which are one of a kinds or very small limited editions.  I also love to take on commissions and take it as a great honour to be able to work with a collector to realise their dream of having their own very special bear made for them.