"Much Loved" Teddy

Mark Nixon’s “Much Loved"

"We love these images from Mark Nixon’s work called Much Loved, showcasing the images and stories of what we all had when we were young, that teddy that was always there for you, your favourite one that got dragged round the garden, pulled, pushed, stuffed, thrown and much more, but still has a place at home 20, 30, 40, 70 years later.”

This is my Teddy Bear. Obviously, it looked like an actual teddy bear at some point, but kind of lost molecular cohesion due to constant companionship. Thinking back, it would probably be fair to say that Teddy here played a very large role in getting me through my first 10 years or so of surgery and other trials.

My favorite story about this bear is that when I was somewhere between 1 and 2 years old, and my parents took me for medical tests in Boston, Teddy got left behind in Logan Airport. Someone found him, and put it together with my parents’ (likely desperate) phone calls to Lost & Found. They ended up putting him in a taxi cab that drove him to the hotel where we were staying. That’s probably the last time I was unsure of where Teddy was. Even now, though I haven’t really played with him or cuddled with him in decades, I can always tell you where he is.