Black and grey traditional flash sheet showing a central urn, a hand holding a dagger, a bird, an eye, a pipe, flowers, arrows and script lettering.

Black and grey flash sheet with urn and hand

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The sheet is a collection of separate tattoo designs on a plain white background, centred on an ornate urn with a bird beside it. Surrounding motifs include a hand gripping a dagger, an eye, a pipe, flowers, arrows, flames, a coin and stylised lettering. The linework is bold and clean, with solid black fills, grey shading and some stippled textures.

Traditional Hand Dagger Bird Eye Pipe Flower Arrow Flame Coin Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Abernethy came into the shop on a Tuesday with the urn wrapped in a bath towel, as though it might catch cold. She set it on the counter between the brass scales and the tin of loose buttons and said her husband had wanted it sold rather than buried, because he had never trusted anything that could not be opened. I told her we took silver, brass and the occasional clock. She only nodded at the lid, where a small hand held a dagger with a ring on its finger, and said he had always been proud of the hand.

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I made the inventory the way my father taught me, one line per object and nothing left to the imagination. Urn, one, black, with a bird on the shoulder that looked back over its wing. Dagger, blunted, ring still on the hilt. Clay pipe, stem cracked and mended with thread. A coin the size of a jam jar lid, worn so smooth the king had no face left, only a rim. A glass eye in a velvet box. Seven arrows bundled with string. A paper twist of dried flowers gone the colour of weak tea. I wrote each one down in blue ink and felt the shop go quiet around me.

When I unscrewed the base to check the weight, a fine grey ash slid across the counter, and beneath it lay a folded slip in a hand I did not know. It said only: Not for sale. Keep the bird. Mrs Abernethy watched me read it and did not look surprised. She picked up the pipe, turned it once in the lamplight, and asked whether I could give her a receipt for nothing. I wrote it out in full, every item listed, and left the urn where it stood on the shelf, the bird still turned towards the door.