Chinese tea · chrome and liquid metal
Chrome closes around the leaf
Thirty-four Chinese teas held inside liquid-metal shells: a visor lens, a chromed pod, a bolted steel housing, with slanted mirror caps beneath and orange marks at the edges.
Chinese tea · chrome and liquid metal
Thirty-four Chinese teas held inside liquid-metal shells: a visor lens, a chromed pod, a bolted steel housing, with slanted mirror caps beneath and orange marks at the edges.
7 teas · 5 categories
The language is eyewear: a curved shell, a lens, bolts, and a plate with the name stamped on it. Sealing is not an arbitrary metaphor for tea, because light, air and damp are the three things that actually ruin a leaf, and a closed housing is what a tin is for. Mirror chrome is useful in a different way: it is the only surface in this set that reflects, so it reads as the opposite of the matte, dry, dusty leaf next to it, and the contrast makes the cut visible. The slant on the type comes from the shell, not from the tea, and it stays on the shell. Interface marks — coordinates, bars, hatching — are kept at caption size, so they annotate rather than shout. The photograph inside the housing is left alone: whatever the sample looked like on the table is what appears behind the lens.