Steiff

Every teddy bear on earth descends from Giengen. Steiff, founded by Margarete Steiff in 1880, made the original — the jointed mohair bear that gave the world's most beloved toy its form — and the house has spent a century and a half defending a simple, staggering claim: whoever your bear was, this workshop made the first one. The street address itself honors Richard Steiff, the nephew whose bear design conquered the world.

The proof is a button. Every genuine Steiff animal carries the Knopf im Ohr — the button in ear — the small brass fastener that has marked authenticity since the house invented brand protection for toys. It exists because imitation began almost immediately; it persists because the difference is real. A Steiff is hand-sewn in mohair, the animals' faces given their expressions by hands trained in the house tradition, each species rendered with a naturalist's respect that makes the menagerie — bears foremost, but elephants, rabbits, the whole ark — feel observed rather than invented.

Steiff animals occupy a category few objects reach: they are toys, heirlooms, and collectibles simultaneously, passed down, auctioned, and above all *kept*. The bear received in childhood attends the rest of a life. That endurance is the house product beneath the mohair: Margarete Steiff, who built a world company from a seamstress's workshop in a small Swabian town, sold something sturdier than toys — the durable companion, button in ear, made in Giengen since 1880.