Richland Bears since 1994

Hi,

I’d like to introduce myself to you: I’m Richard van Aalst and I am a teddybear artist, collector, and author.

I was born and raised in the Netherlands.

My skills in sewing I must have from my great-grand father. He was a professional cloth maker and must also have designed a bit.

My grandfather used to remake the clothing for his kids, but unfortunately my mother was not gifted in sewing. Instead it was passed on to me. In my childhood I used to sew very early. Not after patterns but freehandly. Many hours and day’s I was sewing all clothing by hand.

In these days I had some teddybears but my wicked stepfather trew them away when I where 8. You can imagine how I was feeling. I still feel that hurt in me. I had to grow up in his eyes.

Then years later early 1990 I started to collect bears mainly made by factories. But found also out artist bears. That would be around 1992. I was given by my partner my first artist bear. And from that point on there was no stopping with collecting. Now having more then a 1000 artist bears in my collection I feel proud that I have them all.

Favourite artist??? There are to many good ones. It would be not fair to just name one or two. Every artist is one in his/her own league.

I think in 1993 I met with a other Dutch bear artist Anja Lems, who mainly made bears for her own. What I found a shame because she made great bears. After a few trials and some more help I designed my first bear. His name was Link. I used to have him very long but then a collector in USA wanted him so now he is living in Florida. In my early day’s it was a hobby and then at the age of 25 I stopped with working and concentrated on bear making. One terible year I made more then 300 handmade bears. That was a killing year for me. I was at the point of stop making bears. Then many things happened privetly and now I make about 50bears a year. Many of them are used for trading with other artist. And the rest, well, you can imagne what happened with them. I’m very thankfull that my collectors and fellow artist are so suportive to me over many years. If I only think about Aline, Gabrielle and Anjo. You where so much suport for me. One reason to keep on making bears.  In the years I have been writing many articles about fellow bear artist and also about collecting bears. Because of bad health it’s not posible for me to attend any shows. I hope that in the future that will change. Till then please feel free to mail me and chat with me.

BIG BEAR HUGS & XXXX

Richard