For centuries we’ve thrived off the delicate flavours of fruit. But what if this bite-sized food group became hug-sized? Massey University Textile Design student, Chantelle Tan, sought to make this possible. $700 of wool, 150+ hours of labour, and buying (at least) 30 pears later, she turned her dream into a reality—creating an entirely handstitched and rug tufted pear in a deliciously speckled shade of green. This is how I found myself in Chantelle’s studio space with a seven-kilogram woollen pear on my lap. Around us, her space is dotted with mini felt fruits and strewn with numerous fruit decor. “It’s very theraputic,” she says while cuddling a cat-sized felt mandarin in her lap. “It feels like you’re holding onto something comfy. It emulates the feeling of a fluffy teddy bear.”
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Massive Magazine
Chantelle created her giant pear for the 2025 Exposure exhibition—the College of Creative Arts graduate show. To truly bring the pear to life, Australasian fragrance brand Ecoya sent Chantelle a pear fragrance to spray on her display. “They sent me the pear diffuser and some spray, and I would spray the pear with their room mist, and it would smell like a pear during Exposure,” Chantelle says. Her inspiration for this project came to her during a 2025 trip to Japan. Here, Chantelle visited the Arashiyama bamboo grove which homes a shrine of ema tablets—small wooden plaques that are customised with wishes or prayers. One of these particularly stuck out to Chantelle. It read: “‘I hope to see all of my struggles and hardships bear fruit this year. I wish to see it all be worth the wait.”