Chinese tea · engraved roses, aged cream
The tea is set inside an engraved wreath
Thirty-four Chinese teas plated as specimens: a wreath of engraved roses, an arch of capitals over the top, and the leaf photographed plainly in the middle.
Chinese tea · engraved roses, aged cream
Thirty-four Chinese teas plated as specimens: a wreath of engraved roses, an arch of capitals over the top, and the leaf photographed plainly in the middle.
3 teas · 2 categories
A botanical plate has a fixed job: name a plant, show it at rest, and let the drawing be studied. The frame does the naming here, in an arch of engraved capitals over an oval of roses, and the middle is left to a photograph of the dry leaf with nothing added. The rose is drawn rather than photographed because engraving describes structure — thorn, vein, sepal — better than a lens does, and that is exactly why the tea is photographed rather than drawn: its colour and its break are the facts that matter. Dusty rose and sage keep the frame quieter than the leaf, so a black hong-cha with gold tips still holds the centre. One version reverses onto black, which is what happens when a plate is printed as a negative and the flowers turn to metal. The wreath is not decoration around a product; it is the label.