Down in a warehouse near the Fontainebleau, Walker Babington assembles wood and copper to create this year’s Royal Teddy Bear Ornament for the Royal Sonesta New Orleans. For eight years now, a local artist has been chosen for this special task and this year it was Walker, represented by Hyph3n Art Gallery on Royal Street.
The reason it’s special? The proceeds from the ornament Walker is creating go to the Children’s Hospital.
The whole process starts of as a piece of wood that is stained, cut and sanded down into a square. Surprisingly simple, this piece helps to showcase the copper about to go on it. But that copper needs to be prepared first using a chemical process that is sprayed on the copper tiles and allowed to evaporate. Babington chooses to speed up the processes by using a blow torch on the sprayed tiles to force the evaporation to occur much more quickly.
The process oxides the copper, or turns it into a blueish-green color. Think of the Statue of Liberty: it took decades for the patriotic emblem to turn into the iconic green color it is today, but torching the evaporation speeds these squares through it in a matter of days.
To create the iconic teddy bear, Babington took an X-Acto knife and carved it out of a rubber stamp, allowing him to control the design and also replicate it easily as well. Once the stamp is ready, he presses the inked stamp onto the treated copper resulting in the iconic teddy bear on a unique blue-green tile. Because the oxidation isn’t a uniform process, each tile is slightly different in its coloring and the color pattern.
All that’s left to do is attach the copper to the woods and that comes with just a few dabs of special glue. Once assembled the ornament is ready for its string… and its new home. The entire process takes about four days and will be part of a limited edition. Each piece will be signed and numbered, only one of a collection of 400 whose proceeds go to a good cause: our own Children’s Hospital.
If you’re interested in adding the Teddy Bear ornament to your collection, you can find them at the front desk at Royal Sonesta New Orleans down in the French Quarter at 300 Bourbon Street or purchase them at any one of these three additional locations:
Hyph3n Art Gallery Children’s Hospital Gift Shop The Magic Box Toy Store
1901 Royal Street 200 Henry Clay Avenue 5508 Magazine Street