Traditional style colour tattoo of a red, white and blue barber pole with green leaves and a small flower, on the back of a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Barber pole with leaves on the hand

Traditional · Hand · Colour · Photo

A barber pole with a finial on top and base is shown with red, white and blue stripes, flanked by green leaves and a small pink flower. Bold outlines and flat, solid colour fills are used, with a little shading on the pole. The tattoo sits on the back of a hand, with a plaid shirt sleeve and a pair of tan shoes visible in the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gather in, gather in, and mind the guy ropes, for the ground's been wet since Tuesday. You want the tale of old Ezra Pratt and his striped pole? Then sit on the crate and hush, because Ezra kept his shop in a painted wagon, and his pole stood on the step, red and white and blue, turning round like a sugar stick whenever the wind came off the Downs.

Keep reading

The fair came to Stanmer one October with the rain behind it, and a strongman called Big Tobias Rook took a fancy to Ezra's shaving chair. He came every morning to have his beard trimmed and to tell Ezra his troubles, which were mostly about a winkle seller in Brighton who would not marry him. Ezra listened, snipped, and said nothing, which is the whole secret of barbering.

One morning Tobias sat down and laid a sovereign on the arm of the chair. 'Shave me clean, Ezra, and I'll lift your wagon on one hand.' Ezra shaved him clean and never mentioned the sovereign. Tobias lifted nothing that week. But that night a fist knocked on the wagon door, and there stood Tobias, his jaw red and smarting, saying, 'You've taken my beard and my pride both.' Ezra handed him a flannel and a bottle of witch hazel and sent him back into the dark.

The fair packed up at dawn and rattled off towards Lewes, and Ezra never saw Tobias again. But when he unhitched his pole that spring, he found a small pink flower painted at its foot, neat as a stitch, with a single leaf beside it. A strongman can lift a wagon, my friends, but he cannot lift a secret, and a barber keeps every one he's been paid to hold. Mind your heads on the way out.

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