Plush

I don’t know what the state of research is surrounding cozy things—for all I know, there’s a whole field devoted to figuring out what seems cozy to which populations of people, what coziness does to our brains, and whether there are certain times (of the year, of the day) that we seek for coziness and times we don’t.

Having done no literature review, I’m only sharing a hunch that one reason for the appeal of plush toys is their potential to contribute to a feeling of coziness. Would you agree?

 

Now, in fact, the appeal is likely not just about surface softness—this little guy might not be very silky; cuteness could be doing most of the heavy lifting in this case.

You might consult your own childhood to consider what characteristics made your own favorite companions lovable.

As you may recall, my daughter Loquita is an artist who works in a variety of media—her current and recent projects have included printmaking, ceramic sculpture, and making Spanish moss from a discarded waffle-knit t-shirt. But one of the forms she returns to most often is the making of stuffed things. They’re often animals, but sometimes not: last summer during a family reunion on the shore of a lake where she was deprived of access to her extensive inventory of art materials, she stitched some small mushrooms and filled them with sand.

Much of her work has leaned resolutely toward the unusual, including a purple something she called a murffalo, which memory tells me might be a mermaid/buffalo, and a stuffed Cerberus (mythical three-headed dog). She recently made some creatures that I’m not sure would be comforting as companions for a small child trying to settle down for the night:

This guy will be part of an upcoming exhibit titled “Too many eyes and too many teeth.”

She has made a few different sizes of the creature on the right, a few about six inches tall, and one about thirty inches tall.

 

Let me pull back the curtain for a minute and confess that the impetus for writing this post came from our time in Paris last October. I wanted to build a fitting context in which I could share this photo taken of an arrangement in a cheese shop window.

 

 

It seems unlikely to me that the cheesemonger commissioned this plush bleu for his window display; instead, I have hope that there’s a niche market for such creations, and that somewhere in France there are children who cuddle up with a stuffed wedge like this as they drift off to sleep.

I’d love to hear about any stuffed friends you’ve had (or have) in the comments.

 

 

[Images: Oxana Lyashenko for Unsplash, Loquita, Yours Truly]