Vintage Cherished Teddies Mindy Ballerina Figurine – Friendship Keeps Me On My Toes, Enesco Priscilla Hillman 156418, Teddy Bear 1996

Cherished Teddies began in a sickbed: illustrator Priscilla Hillman, laid up with a back injury in the late 1980s, filled a watercolour book with the patched, well-loved teddy bears of her imagination. Enesco turned those paintings into figurines in 1992, and for a decade the world adopted them by the hundred thousand — literally adopted: every bear shipped with a registration card, and the handwritten Reg. No. IIIp43/950 under this one's base means a collector somewhere formally took Mindy in, nearly thirty years ago.

Mindy is the ballerina of the class of 1996. Pink and white tutu in layered ruffles, satin ribbons criss-crossing up her legs, a rose in her hair wreath and a flower on each slipper toe, posed mid-curtsy on a wood-grain base. Her motto, stamped beneath — "Friendship Keeps Me On My Toes" — carries the series' gentle double meaning, and the little gingham patch on her leg is Hillman's signature detail: every Cherished Teddy is a bear that has already been loved a little threadbare.

At 3.5 inches she is a standing standard issue from the mid-90s golden years, when the face painting and ruffle moulding were at their sharpest. A natural recital gift for a small dancer, a reunion for anyone who had a shelf of these in 1996, or the missing number for a collector — she pairs sweetly with Butch the football hero, also in this shop.