Chinese tea · petrol blue, terracotta, copper line
Two washes of paint and a copper line
Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed in low warm light on painted petrol blue, with terracotta brushed through it and tea branches drawn in copper hairline.
Chinese tea · petrol blue, terracotta, copper line
Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed in low warm light on painted petrol blue, with terracotta brushed through it and tea branches drawn in copper hairline.
8 teas · 5 categories
The ground is painted rather than printed, so every sheet carries the brush direction and the places where the terracotta stops short of the corner. That leaves a surface with depth but no pattern, which suits dark material: aged clumps, resin blocks and roasted strip leaf read as objects on it instead of dissolving. Copper line drawings do the work an ornament usually does, but they stay hairline and stay at the edge, framing without filling. The type is a light serif with an italic wordmark, set small, because a low-lit page loses its calm the moment the lettering gets heavy. Chinese tea earns this treatment through its own colour range — rust, bronze, near-black, faint silver — which is exactly the range the two washes are mixed from. Where a seal or hangul appears it is left as a mark, not explained.