ra*****me
Highest Bidder
$2,500
Sold
sold
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- Estimate
- $1,100 / $1,500
Description
17" (43 cm.) and 23". Each is golden mohair with swivel head, amber glass eyes, stitched-on ears, extended muzzle, excelsior stuffing, hump back the smaller with brown embroidered nose and (recovered) paw pads, and the larger with felt paw pads. Condition: well loved, worn. Marks: larger has original Steiff button in ear. Comments: Steiff, 1930s. Value Points: included with the bears is a family written provenance. The bears, named Mika ("he's the big one") and Rita were given to young Zenta Zeberg in Prague on her first birthday in 1937. Thereafter Europe fell apart. Zenta and her family along with two little bears fled first to Poland, then Latvia, then the Tyrolean Alps and finally "after two lengthy stays in two emigration camps...we boarded a troop ship, the SS Marine Flasher for a 13-day Atlantic crossing, landing at New York City on November 10, 1947". The family history is included with the teddy bears along with photographs of Zenta as a young child playing with the bears.