PEAR & MULBERRY | 梨桑设计 is a design, publishing, and cultural research practice centered on cultural memory, material heritage, and contemporary forms of storytelling. Our work focuses on publications, artist books, visual research, and collaborative cultural projects that reinterpret tradition through design.

The pear and mulberry trees, both historically significant and deeply rooted in cultural vernacular, reflect how we approach heritage. For us, heritage is not static, distant, or sealed in the past. It is a living language that can be translated, reframed, and reactivated through new forms.

PEAR & MULBERRY stands for both remembrance and exploration. For those living far from home, it offers a quiet point of return, an emotional and cultural anchor shaped by memory, belonging, and self-recognition. We are interested in how design can hold that feeling and turn homesickness, inherited memory, and cultural fragments into forms that are reflective, resonant, and able to travel across contexts.

Our practice is grounded in authenticity, intellectual rigor, and deep respect for cultural legacies. At the same time, it is shaped by a contemporary design sensibility, careful storytelling, and strong material awareness. We create work that is visually compelling, culturally attentive, and educational in spirit, connecting past and present through publications, objects, and research-driven collaborations.

PEAR & MULBERRY began in industrial design, parametric modeling, and materials research. Early projects explored the intersection of health, ergonomics, and computational aesthetics. Works such as We|aver+, a therapeutic 3D-printed sole designed for pediatric use, combined advanced manufacturing with human-centered functionality and received recognition from the iF Design Talent Award, IDA, EPDA, and the Green Concept Award. That background continues to shape how we work today. It informs our systems-oriented mindset, our sensitivity to structure and material, and our interest in how design can move across scales, from object to interface to publication.

As the studio evolved, so did our ambitions. Our focus expanded from individual products to broader cultural questions. We became increasingly interested in how design can operate as a cultural system, a spatial language, and a generative platform across formats. Publishing grew naturally from that shift.

Today, publishing sits at the heart of the studio. Through artist books, editorial projects, and the ongoing Design × series, we explore how design can function not only as a way of making things, but also as a framework for knowledge, interpretation, and cultural continuity.

Our projects often move across disciplines and formats, bringing together visual culture, spatial thinking, digital tools, and heritage research. Whether through experimental publications, scanned artifacts, or cross-cultural narratives, we aim to create work that invites deeper attention and richer engagement with the worlds it emerges from.

We also approach sustainability as both an ethic and a method. We favor thoughtful production, responsible material choices, and long-term cultural care over disposable novelty. For us, preservation is not about freezing the past. It is about giving memory new relevance, new audiences, and new ways to endure.

“PEAR” | 梨

Pear wood holds a special place in the history of Chinese print culture. In traditional bookmaking, woodblocks were often carved from pear wood, linking the pear to preservation, transmission, and the recording of knowledge.

At the same time, “pear” (梨) echoes “leave” (离) in Chinese, giving it an emotional resonance tied to departure, distance, and homesickness. Within PEAR & MULBERRY, pear speaks both to cultural memory and to the experience of carrying one’s roots across places. It reflects our desire to preserve what matters while transforming longing into continuity and new cultural expression.

“MULBERRY” | 桑

Mulberry has long symbolized home, continuity, and everyday cultural life in Chinese tradition. Its significance extends across food, medicine, sericulture, dyeing, and papermaking, making it deeply woven into both material practice and collective memory.

Among its most meaningful legacies is mulberry bark paper (桑皮纸), a durable archival material long used for letters, manuscripts, and printed texts. Lightweight yet resilient, it became a quiet carrier of memory and knowledge across time. Within PEAR & MULBERRY, mulberry represents this rooted and sustaining force, the material foundation through which culture is held, used, and passed forward.