MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN

a pairing of MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN Japanese tea + artwork
to share and appreciate gyokuro’s tea’s deep stillness and
build reserve, health, and community in the new year 

Our first taste of gyokuro tea literally stopped our conversation. In stunned silence, we took in the experience.

A pearl of sweet depth. Rolling softly along taste buds. Then gone. As though we had tasted a mountain just before it dissolved into a cloud-trace of minerality. 

Gyokuro is translated as “jade dew.” When brewed well, the experience of it is brief but profound. A pot offers just a few sips. Intense ephemerality is an essential part of this tea’s aesthetic nature. 

The geologic has been a core focus and passion of smudge studio’s practice for the past 15+ years. Drinking tea, we literally embody geologic forces of the cosmos: fire, oxygen, water, sunlight, earth.

And so, with much joy, we offer this pairing of an original smudge art work + a tasting packet of one of our favorite gyokuros.

We named this tea/artwork MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN, after the nonagram created for our project, THUNDER³ : 002020.*

The I Ching’s MOUNTAIN trigram signifies stillness. Here, at the end of 002021, as we enter 002022, we compound it three times. 

A packet of MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN tea** is accompanied with an original 5” x 7” artwork.

DETAILS:

Each package includes:

— 25 grams of high-grade Yamashita Gyokuro from Maiko Tea, Kyotonabe, Japan. Sealed and prepared in Kyoto Prefecture in smudge studio-designed packaging. 25 grams is the ideal amount for three pots of gyokuro (approx. 8 grams each). Each pot can be shared among 1-3 people across 3-5 steepings.

— 5” x 7” print (each print is an original artwork and will vary in appearance from the images above):

  • letter-pressed text excerpted from the changing lines of I Ching Hexagram #52, STILLNESS (translated by David Hinton)

  • mountain-inflected image painted in grey acorn ink foraged from Prospect Park, Brooklyn cured with iron foraged from Provincetown, MA harbor

  • linocut nonagram (MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN) inspired by the I Ching.

—detailed brewing and serving instruction.

For this first release, 40 sets of tea + artwork are available.

SOLD OUT


We invite you to enjoy your tea from a Tilt of the Earth 23.5º Teacup or a Long Life Design antique from Japan (in collaboration with Marie Uno).

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*THUNDER³ : 002020 draws from and builds upon the original eight I-Ching trigrams. For millennia, the I-Ching has informed humans of the necessity and wisdom of moving—with, and expecting—change. Quaking with imminent transformations to come, THUNDER³ : 002020 nonagrams signal the arrival of inciting forces of the physical universe during this time of massive planetary change.

**We visited Maiko tea in Kyotanabe, Japan, in 2008. Since then, we have been dedicated customers of this special cooperative in Kyoto prefecture. Yamashita Toshikazu of Maiko is a living National Treasure of Japan. His award-winning gyokuro has come to define this type of tea for us.