Chinese tea · folded paper, drawn creases
Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed on folded paper: a radial pleat under the leaf, fold diagrams in hairline around it, cobalt and ochre fans from the corners.
7 teas · 5 categories
One flat sheet, folded, becomes a surface with depth, and that is the whole idea of these pages. The pleats radiate from under the leaf so the light does the describing: every ridge is a different grey, and a heap of dark twisted leaf reads sharply against them without any styling. The hairline diagrams beside the photograph are the pattern, not decoration — creases, valleys, registration marks, the instructions that produced the surface you are looking at. Colour is rationed to cobalt, charcoal, ochre and one red stamp, so the page stays as cool as paper and the tea keeps its own tone. This suits Chinese tea because a leaf is also a folded thing: rolled, twisted, pressed, and it opens under water the way the paper opens under the hand. Charcoal-roasted rock oolong and pressed pu-erh in particular are objects of structure before they are flavours. Nothing here is draped or softened; the geometry is stated and the leaf is placed on it.