Chinese tea, stamped on steel
Names bolted onto plate metal
Thirty-four Chinese teas labelled the way machinery is labelled: a riveted plate, condensed stencil letters, one red stripe and a serial number.
Chinese tea, stamped on steel
Thirty-four Chinese teas labelled the way machinery is labelled: a riveted plate, condensed stencil letters, one red stripe and a serial number.
3 teas · 2 categories
A tea label usually tries to look gentle. This one borrows from the opposite trade: the plate riveted to a lathe, the stencilled crate, the tag with a number and nothing else. Weight is carried by the letterform rather than by ornament, so the type is condensed, tilted and heavy enough to hold a whole page on its own. The red stripe and the halftone fields exist to keep the metal from going grey, and the crop marks admit that the whole thing is a print. Chinese tea earns this treatment because the trade behind it is industrial, with lots, grades, presses and dates. Set against cold steel the leaf reads warmer than it would on cream paper, which is the point of the pairing.