Chinese tea · stitched, not drawn
The border is counted, not drawn
Thirty-four Chinese teas held inside a cross-stitch frame in red, black and unbleached cream, with a crow over the top and the leaf photographed flat in the middle of it.
Chinese tea · stitched, not drawn
Thirty-four Chinese teas held inside a cross-stitch frame in red, black and unbleached cream, with a crow over the top and the leaf photographed flat in the middle of it.
7 teas · 5 categories
Cross-stitch is drawing on a fixed grid: every mark is one square, and the pattern is inherited rather than invented. Tea has the same discipline in it — a grade is a count of buds and leaves, and a shape like a pressed cake is repeated by hand until it holds. Setting the two against each other gives the sheet its structure: the border is counted and symmetrical, the leaf in the middle is not, and the contrast is the whole composition. Red does the work here because it is the ground of the ornament and also the colour these teas are named for, from the big red robe to the red liquor of a Fujian hong cha. The crow is the brand's own animal and it is kept as line drawing so it reads as a stamp rather than an illustration. The Latin and Cyrillic names sit on the same arc, because these teas travelled north before they were ever written in English.