Chinese tea · silver crest on black
Thirty-four Chinese teas set into a symmetrical crest of crosses, scrollwork and standing daggers, all of it rendered as metal. The tea in the middle is left as a photograph.
4 teas · 4 categories
A crest is a symmetrical argument: it puts one object in the middle and defends it with ornament on both sides. That structure is useful for tea, because a category like dark tea or rock oolong is not sold on novelty but on the idea that something has been kept and repeated for a long time. The silver is rendered with real weight — bevels, highlights, shadow under the scrollwork — so the ornament reads as an object rather than a filter. Blackletter is used only for names, at one size, arched, and never for anything you actually need to read quickly. The daggers and crosses are silversmith motifs, and they stay motifs: they are not doing anything to the tea, they are standing beside it. Black is the ground because polished metal needs somewhere dark to be seen against, and the one white version proves the crest survives without it.