BIOGRAPHY
THE TEDDY BEAR STORY
Photographer & Designer,
Mirja de Vries born in Amsterdam
where she also works and lives.

In 1974 she graduated from the
Gerrit Rietveld Academy with a degree
in Graphic Design and Photography.

Since 1975 she has had the privilege
of photographing many rare, famous,
and some of the most unusual Teddies
from private collections.

She became more and more fascinated
with Teddy Bears, especially old Teds
who had experienced life to the fullest,
and began photographing them in
all their favorite cosy places.

The result of this initial work was a
book entitled "De Knuffels"(The Cuddles)
with text by Paul Haenen published by
Meulenhoff, Amsterdam in 1980.


In 1982 Dumont Buchverlag, Köln
Germany, published her first Teddy Bear
postcard pocketbook, followed by
postcard publisher Art Unlimited,
Amsterdam.



Jos Smit, Director of Art Unlimited,
first brought out a series of 12 different
Teddy Bearstillifes as postcards.
This series was an immediate big success.

To date Art Unlimited has published
more than 300 different teddy stil-
lifes as postcards, posters and
calendars.
Over 6 million postcards have been
sold all over the world.

In 1991 the dutch Teddy Bear magazine
"Beer Bericht"presented Mirja with the
"Award of Merit"for her talents in
spreading interest in Teddy Bears.
She photographed the covers and editorial articles inside.

In 2002 publisher Joost Elffers Books
New York published "Teddy's World",
a 182 pages hard cover book with
full-page color photography composed
out of Mirja de Vries huge Teddy Bear
photograph archive.

Her photographs are also been used
for several publications in Germany,
Great Britain, USA and Japan.