Chinese tea · black on black, numbered by hand
Thirteen of fifty, written on the tag
Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed on waxed black cloth, each one tagged, numbered and annotated by hand, with the amber only showing at the edges.
Chinese tea · black on black, numbered by hand
Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed on waxed black cloth, each one tagged, numbered and annotated by hand, with the amber only showing at the edges.
7 teas · 5 categories
The method here is to withhold — no white space, no bright colour, no label big enough to read across a room — so that anything you do learn has to be looked for. Chinese tea rewards the same patience: a heavily fermented pu-erh gives up nothing at first sight, and the difference between two batches is a matter of edges and residue. Hand stitching and a numbered tag say that quantity is small and the sequence matters, which is literally true of a single spring picking from old bushes. The anatomical and chemical drawings sit there as a reminder that a drink is a substance acting on a body, not only a taste. Black on black forces the photography to work with rim light alone, so the leaf is described by its silhouette and its gloss. Nothing is styled to look older than it is — the paper is stained because tags get handled.