Chinese tea · one letter, nine weights
One letter, and the tea inside it
Thirty-four Chinese teas set as type specimens — a single giant O, a weight ladder from hairline to black, Latin and Cyrillic in the same rows.
Chinese tea · one letter, nine weights
Thirty-four Chinese teas set as type specimens — a single giant O, a weight ladder from hairline to black, Latin and Cyrillic in the same rows.
3 teas · 3 categories
A specimen sheet exists to show one thing under controlled conditions, and that is the whole structure borrowed here: a single letter at display size, then the same letter stepped through every weight so the difference is measurable. The O is chosen because it is the shape that reveals a geometric grotesque fastest — how round the bowl really is, where the stroke thins, how much air is left in the counter. Putting the leaf inside that counter makes the frame do double duty and keeps the photograph from becoming a backdrop. Latin and Cyrillic sit in adjacent rows for the same reason a tea list sits in Chinese and English: neither script is a translation of the other, both are the thing itself. Chinese tea belongs on a sheet like this because it is already catalogued by grade and weight, and a ladder is an honest way to show gradation. Everything else is hairline rules and small figures, so the page stays a measuring instrument rather than an advertisement.