That honor belongs to Margarete Steiff (1847-1909), an indomitable German woman from the town of Giengen am Brenz near Ulm.  At eighteen months, she contracted polio, which left her legs crippled and right arm seriously disabled.  There were signs early on that she was determined to find ways to work around her physical disability.  Being musical, she mastered the zither instead of becoming frustrated when the violin and piano proved too difficult.   In spite of being very clumsy with her needle at first, she persevered until she mastered the craft of sewing.  She was the first in Giengen to purchase a sewing machine, carefully modified so she could operate it on the left.

A born entrepreneur, she designed a line of felt petticoats sold at her dressmaking shop: to fill orders she was obliged to hire more employees. In 1880 a pattern for a felt pincushion in a magazine inspired her to make little stuffed elephants, which were given away to children as toys, not tools.  Before long she decided to produce them in quantity, add new animals to the line, and issue a catalogue.  The enterprise did so well that in 1893 the workforce was expanded and a factory building opened.  The firm began to exhibit its products at the Leipzig Toy Fair and Harrod’s began selling Steiff figures in 1895.

Margarete’s nephew Richard, who studied at the Stuttgart Kunstgewerbeschule [School of Arts and Crafts], joined the business in 1897.  New designs were suggested by the extensive sketches of bears and other animals he made in Stuttgart.   By 1903, the Steiff company built a new factory with glass curtain walls, a landmark in the history of modern architecture. Because the women workers inside it were visible,  the building flooded with natural light was nicknamed the “Jungenfrauenaquarium”—the young ladies’ aquarium.Because the story of how Steiff invented the teddy bear and went on to establish itself as an international manufacturer of children’s dreams is widely available elsewhere, I’ll skip ahead to the 1950s and highlight two Steiff catalogues acquired for the collection.  They were available at Blinn’s, 64 Cannon Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut.  Promotional brochures like these are invaluable documentation of how children’s material culture developed during the mid-twentieth century.  Even though Cotsen does not collect stuffed animals, the catalogues provide information about Steiff’s product range, pricing, and marketing, as well as clues for its consumer appeal.Printed in Germany for the English-speaking market, the 14-page pamphlets show in full color dozens of stuffed creatures, felt miniatures, dolls, and hand puppets.  The pictures may be much smaller than ones typically found on a website like FAO Schwartz or Selfridge’s, but what they lack in detail, they make up in personality.  While the stuffed animals can be arranged by category or type, often a variety of animals are composed into mischievous little vignettes.  The chase scenes, stand-offs between different parties, little ones running away from big ones, were perhaps intended as suggestions for imaginative play with the Steiff zoo.

Actual toys confirm how well the company was maintaining the founder’s  quality standards five decades out.  The animals in my small childhood collection acquired in the early 1960s are pictured in the catalogs. Although never stored according to best practices, they would look even better with a little cleaning.  The bodies of glossy mohair plush  were so carefully constructed of numerous pieces that they still stand up. The beaver is probably the best example of the efforts made to create an appealing figure.  The head swivels and the front legs can be spread away from the body.  Shaded plush was used for the head, front legs, and belly, while the back is covered with a fabric of stiff prickles.   The teeth, inside of the mouth, paws, and tail are all felt.  The eyes are black glass and the nose is hand stitched.  It should have the name tag attached to its tummy and a second tag with the Steiff name and logo fastened with a metal button in the ear, but I carefully removed them, unaware that this act of vandalism would lower their future value.

All this is to explain why Steiff stuffed animals have always been a true luxury brand: the 13-inch Jumbo elephant in the 1958 catalog was $17.00, a price adjusted for inflation in 2025 translates into buying power of $190.00.   Twenty or so years ago, FAO Schwartz displayed recumbent lions and tigers the size of German shepherds which probably cost in the thousands.  The brand is still prestigious, but the product lines have been changed, with more characters from modern franchises like Peanuts, Harry Potter, Batman outnumbering the creatures from the forests, rivers, mountains, and farmyards.  Nothing like my beaver is to be had except on Etsy, Ebay, and Ruby Lane.

Compare the Steiff animals with the deconstructed stuffties and plushies available in a good mall’s toy store.   Many are as soft and squishy as a pillow, which makes them much more attractive to some children than the stiff substantial Steiffs. The rounded, simple shapes of the modern stuffed animals are cuddly, colorful, and cute, but displayed on store shelves they look more bland and generic than the little pictures of the Steiffs in the 1950s catalogs. Of course they were intended to prompt the desire to purchase and possess, but the fact that they neither look nor feel  disposable says, “Keep me.”