Great piece in The New York Times on Mascot Maker Jean-Claude Tremblay, who designs and manufactures mascot suits and costumes for sports teams.

After his wife kicked him out, Jean-Claude Tremblay moved into his small factory here and set up a cot. He slept there for two years, he said, as he devoted himself to what was becoming his life’s work: building mascots.

“I love fur,” Tremblay said on a recent morning, some 35 years later, inside the same factory, as he pawed at a shelf full of faux fur — orange fur, purple fur, green fur — destined to become outerwear for zany creatures with weight issues and mischievous streaks. “When I touch the furs, I go crazy.”

Tremblay, 68, who has a deep tan from the golf course and the wiry frame of an aging acrobat, has persisted through the decades as a craftsman in the most specialized of professions. Yet his work is everywhere. Dinosaurs who dance on minor league dugouts. Ducks who ice-skate between periods. Horses who celebrate touchdowns by spraying multicolored ribbons from their nostrils.

…And check out the official Manufacturing Day site here!

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