Chinese tea · drawn by hand
The whole page is drawn around the cup
Thirty-four Chinese teas set inside hand-inked scenes on cream stock — suns and moons with faces, mushrooms, flames, a teapot, and skeletons who are clearly enjoying themselves.
Chinese tea · drawn by hand
Thirty-four Chinese teas set inside hand-inked scenes on cream stock — suns and moons with faces, mushrooms, flames, a teapot, and skeletons who are clearly enjoying themselves.
7 teas · 5 categories
Everything on this page is made by hand except the leaf, and the contrast is the whole idea: a wobbling ink line around a sharp photograph reads as someone's account of drinking the tea rather than a manufacturer's claim about it. The four inks are deliberately muddy and slightly misaligned, the way a small screenprint run comes out, so the page looks like it was made in a quantity of fifty. Suns, moons and skeletons are old company for tea — a drink measured in the time it takes and passed between people who will not be around forever — and they carry that meaning without a word of copy. The arcs and banners do real work by wrapping long pinyin names into shapes a reader can take in at a glance. The mushrooms and flames are drawn ornament and nothing more; what is in the cup is leaf and hot water. Cream stock keeps the whole thing warm, so the darkest object in the frame is always the tea.