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Draft — 7 of 34 teas designed in this style. Ask us to finish it
Medooza tea study

Chinese tea · engraved, spiked, dark

The snakes hold the leaf, they do not frame it

Thirty-four Chinese teas engraved in fine line on black, with spiked blackletter names, chain and thorn borders and one accent colour per sheet.

Black panel with a fine-line engraved head wreathed in snakes above a heap of glossy dark pu-erh paste cubes, spiked white lettering across the top

Seven categories, one engraving hand

7 teas · 5 categories

Green teaGreen tea1 teaOolongOolong3 teasRed tea (hongcha)Red tea (hongcha)1 teaPu-erhPu-erh1 teaTea paste (chagao)Tea paste (chagao)1 tea

Engraved onto wear

All tees and hoodies →

Wear — Ripe Pu-erh PasteRipe Pu-erh PasteWear — Dà Hóng PáoDà Hóng PáoWear — Gong Ting Pu-erhGong Ting Pu-erhWear — Hēi JīnHēi JīnWear — Mòlì Lǒng ZhúMòlì Lǒng ZhúWear — Nǎi Xiāng OolongNǎi Xiāng Oolong

Why the darkest teas got the darkest sheets

Metal-poster drawing is a discipline of line: no fills, no gradients, everything built from hatching that has to hold at t-shirt scale. The teas on these sheets are the fermented and the fire-roasted ones, which are genuinely dark in the cup, so the black ground is describing the liquor rather than posturing. Spiked blackletter is used for the same reason a rock oolong is called big red robe: the name is meant to sound like the taste it delivers. The snakes are drawn to coil around the leaf instead of enclosing it in a box, because a heap of ripe pu-erh has no edges to box. One accent per sheet keeps the engraving readable — acid green where the tea is sharp, red where the roast is heavy. The seal cartouches carry the Chinese name because on a sheet this loud the origin is the one thing that has to stay legible.