Chinese tea · chrome ring, three notes
A ring of chrome around a wet black leaf
Thirty-four Chinese teas set inside a chromed gradient ring on black or white, each with a three-line index of notes and nothing else on the sheet.
Chinese tea · chrome ring, three notes
Thirty-four Chinese teas set inside a chromed gradient ring on black or white, each with a three-line index of notes and nothing else on the sheet.
3 teas · 3 categories
A ring is the honest frame for tea because almost everything here is round: the cake, the heap seen from above, the surface of the liquor in a cup. Running the name around the circumference means it has to be read by turning, which is slower than a headline and closer to how a label on a tin behaves. The chrome gradient is one continuous sweep rather than a set of flat colours, so the ring reads as a single object catching light instead of a graphic effect. Gloss belongs to these teas in particular: ripe pu-erh paste is genuinely lacquer-black and wet-looking, and a matte treatment would be a lie about the material. The three-line index replaces tasting copy — ripe, golden-bud, mahogany — because three words in a fixed order can be compared across thirty-four teas and a paragraph cannot. Black and white are the only grounds, so the ring is the only colour in the shop.