Teddy Bear's Holiday

This unique handmade volume tells the story of a teddy bear, created in London during the Blitz in 1944 and sent to a young evacuee. Both a personal narrative and a historical artefact, the book reflects the resourcefulness and emotional resilience of wartime life.

The binding itself - constructed from humble materials, likely including a repurposed tea towel - forms an essential part of its story. As such, the conservation approach focused on stabilising the structure while preserving as much original material as possible, ensuring that the physical evidence of its making remains intact for future generations.

Rather than restoring the book to an idealised state, this project prioritised the ethical conservation of its history - respecting the marks of use, material limitations, and handmade ingenuity that make this piece so special.

The original boards were removed and housed within the box alongside the binding, so that their annotations and drawings might be preserved with the book. They were no longer stable enough to support the book structure, and to return them to the book would hide the doodles. The original cover was drummed on to the new boards and the binding was sewn back together in its original style, once the interior had been repaired and with the addition of new paste downs, which had been lost. The blue cover was returned and the pastedowns adhered to the interior of the board.