Posted by Vividify Editorial
on September 17, 2026
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Kay Bojesen's bear is made in four heights, from a figure that closes inside one hand to one that stands 40 cm tall on the floor. The gap between the ends of the range is larger than it first sounds: the tallest bear is more than four times the height of the smallest and over eighty times its weight. This is how the Liliput, small, medium and large compare, and what each one does once it is in a room.
The four sizes at a glance
Every size in the family is cut from the same two woods, untreated oak and untreated maple, so the choice is not about material but about scale and mass. The numbers below come from the measurements given for each figure, height first, then width and depth.
| Bear | Height | Width x depth | Weight | Wood | Sits best |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bear liliput oak/maple | 9.5 cm | 6 x 4 cm | 0.03 kg | Untreated oak, untreated maple | Windowsill, desk, narrow ledge |
| Bear small oak/maple | 14.5 cm | 9 x 6 cm | 0.11 kg | Untreated oak, untreated maple | Bookshelf, bedside table, nursery shelf |
| Bear medium oak/maple | 25 cm | 16 x 10.5 cm | 0.61 kg | Untreated oak, untreated maple | Sideboard, console, wide shelf |
| Bear large oak/maple | 40 cm | 25.5 x 17 cm | 2.53 kg | Untreated oak, untreated maple | Floor beside a chair, low table, hearth |
Read the weight column as carefully as the height one. At 0.03 kg the Liliput is light enough to travel in a coat pocket, while the large bear at 2.53 kg has to be carried with two hands and will stay exactly where it is put.
Oak and maple: two tones in one figure
The bear is built from two woods rather than one, and both are left untreated. That two-tone construction is the detail your eye reads first from across a room, because the join between the woods breaks the silhouette into parts and gives the figure its face and its limbs without any painted line. Up close the surfaces are dry and matt rather than lacquered, which is why the grain reads so clearly on the larger sizes.
Because each figure is cut from natural timber, grain, weight and tone differ slightly from piece to piece, and two bears of the same size rarely match exactly. This matters most if you are building a group. A pair of small bears bought together will still be two individuals, and that is part of the character of the range rather than a flaw in it.
Care is the same across all four sizes. Keep the figure out of direct sunlight, wipe it with a dry, soft cloth, and keep it away from the dishwasher and from radiators.
Arms that move
The arms move, and that single feature changes how each size behaves on a shelf. On the Bear medium oak/maple and the Bear large oak/maple the movement is generous enough to be part of the styling: arms raised gives an alert, greeting posture, arms lowered gives a calm standing one, and a half turn on one side alone reads as a wave. People who live with these figures tend to reposition them without thinking about it, the way you straighten a picture frame.
On the smaller two the same articulation is there but works at a different scale. The Bear small oak/maple at 14.5 cm still shows a clear change of posture from across a table. The Liliput at 9.5 cm reads more as a single carved shape, and its charm is that it is complete in the palm of a hand rather than that it can be posed from a distance.
Visual weight: shelf, table or floor
Height alone does not tell you where a figure belongs. A bear occupies a footprint too, and the large one is 25.5 cm wide and 17 cm deep, so it needs a clear area roughly the size of a dinner plate before it looks settled. Put it on a crowded shelf and it fights everything around it. Put it on the floor beside an armchair, at the end of a bookcase run, or on a low table with nothing else on it, and it becomes the one object in the room people walk over to touch.
The medium at 25 cm is the size that behaves like furniture on a horizontal surface. On a sideboard or a wide console it holds its own next to a lamp or a vase without needing the whole surface to itself, and its 0.61 kg gives it enough presence that it does not get knocked about.
The small and the Liliput work by accumulation instead. They are the sizes you place in a line on a windowsill, on a nursery shelf beside books, or on a desk where a hand can reach them during a phone call. In a small flat this is often the more useful decision: a 14.5 cm figure adds character to a room without asking for any floor area at all.
Which bear to choose
If the bear is a gift for a child or a first piece in the range, the small is the size most people settle on: big enough to handle and pose, light at 0.11 kg, and easy to fit on a shelf that already has things on it. If you want the figure to hold a room, go to the large and give it the floor. The medium is the middle answer for a sideboard or a mantel, and the Liliput is for the person who likes finding a tiny wooden face on a windowsill.
There is also a Reworked Anniversary version of the small bear made in mixed wood, for anyone who prefers a more varied combination of timbers than the oak and maple pairing. And if you are weighing the bear against the other Bojesen animals, our guide to the Kay Bojesen monkey sizes covers the same questions of scale for a figure that hangs rather than stands.
Seen together, the four bears make the argument better than any single one does: the same shape at four scales, each with a different job. See the rest of the range in the Wooden Figures collection.