Alice's Bear Shop from Russ Berrie
View our Range of bears from Alice's Bear Shop

Rikey Austin's great love is in painting bears and making up bear stories. This great passion started from humble beginnings with sketches for her friends and stories for her children.

When they were young, Rikey's three sons listened to her stories about teddy bears and their adventures. Many of these stories suddenly found a home, a beginning, in the creation of Alice, a little girl who helped her mum in a teddy bear repar shop. Alice finds many bears in various situations and her life revolves around their adventures and the inevitable repairs that follow. Along with these delightful stories, Rikey painted the bears whose lives had become entwined in Alice's shop.

Rikey's characters include Cobby, who fell overboard during a boat trip around the bay, Mary-Jane, who was so busy with shells, buckets and flags that she didn't notice the tide coming in, and Tat, who's been so loved that he left a trail of stuffing wherever he went.

This autumn, the first of her stories have been published under the banner of 'Tales from Alice's Bear Shop', with illustrations painted by Rikey herself. And here, her characters have come to life as part of RUSS' Alice's Bear Shop Collection.

Rikey Austin lives with her family in Lyme Regis, England, a coastal town that served as the backdrop for The French Lieutenant's Woman and gives her bear tales a hint of salt and sea.

Although she has tried her hand at sewing, "I'm much safer with a paint brush," Rikey confessed. Fortunately, Rikey's best girlfriend, Jo Farmer, has the sewing skills to bring Rikey's sketches to life. From Rikey's sketches, she created patterns and crafted the first handmade bears. "Jo is a real artist," said Rikey. "She said it couldn't be done, and then she did it!"

"Because the bears are so vivid in my imagination, I have very strong ideas about how they should look and feel," the artist continued. "I have many RUSS bears at home, and whenever I thought about a family of Alice's bears being created, there simply was no other company that I would have contacted," she said.

"After initial meetings with Chris Robinson, President of International Division, Rikey and Jo met with members of RUSS' design team. "We were very unprofessional," Rikey said. "We giggled at big meetings and cried when we first saw the bears on display. At the moment, I don't think we can believe that this isn't a dream. I keep thinking I'll wake up any moment."

Of all the characters she has created, Woodroffe has a special place in her heart, Rikey admitted. Woodroffe was the first bear she showed to her son Leon, who just turned five. "I started to tell Woodroffe's story and I brought him out of a bag and sat him on the bed. Leon turned to me, his eyes huge, and said, "That's him, isn't it? He is real, isn't he?"

Along with his older brothers, Tom, 14, and Jack, 13, Leon inspired Rikey's stories. "They are so much a part of the stories that they should have their names on the front of the books, too," Rikey said. "I love sharing stories with them. When they were younger, I'd tell them about the bears that came to me for repair, and we'd guess at how they'd gotten into such sorry states," she recalled.

View our Range of bears from Alice's Bear Shop