Chinese tea · set in gold prongs
The leaf is set like a stone
Thirty-four Chinese teas held in gold prong settings against robin's-egg blue: filigree corners, a satin ribbon, and the name in letterspaced gold italics.
Chinese tea · set in gold prongs
Thirty-four Chinese teas held in gold prong settings against robin's-egg blue: filigree corners, a satin ribbon, and the name in letterspaced gold italics.
3 teas · 3 categories
A prong setting is the least dishonest display case ever made: it holds an object at the edges and covers almost none of it, so you can look at the thing from every side. Used on tea it forces the same discipline — the leaf is shown dry, whole and unbrewed, and the mount cannot hide a broken grade. Robin's-egg blue is a cool ground, which means it flatters nothing: a green tea photographed against it stays the green it actually is, and a dark pu-erh does not warm up. In the Longjing page the blades stand upright and fanned, the way a grader lays them out to read the fold and the flatten, not the way a stylist piles them. Ribbon, filigree and velvet stay at the frame and never cross the product. Pinyin is set in italic caps with tone marks and given the same size as the hanzi. Nothing in the layout compares tea to a jewel or to a price — the setting is a way of looking, not a valuation.