Black ink line drawing of a chickadee perched on a stack of three patterned teacups with a teabag tag and saucer, in a fine line style.

Chickadee perched on stacked teacups

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A small songbird, likely a chickadee, sits on the rim of a stack of three ornate teacups resting on a saucer. The drawing uses fine, even pen linework with light hatching on the bird's wings and cup shading, and the cups carry scrollwork bands and floral motifs. It is drawn in black ink on white paper with no colour.

Fine line Botanical Bird Teacup Saucer Scrollwork Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crate came off the boat at Hull with straw in its seams and a small grey-capped bird sitting on the top cup, as if it had paid the fare. Mrs Pell, who mended crockery in the back room of a shop on Silver Street, lifted the lid and found three teacups nested in twists of newsprint, each one banded in scrollwork and dusted with tiny roses. The bird did not fly when she reached in. It turned its head and looked at her the way the harbourmaster looked at a late tide.

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She tried the broom, then a tea towel, then a slice of seed cake from her own tin. The bird took the cake, left the crumbs, and hopped down onto the saucer to wait. Tucked beneath it was a paper tag on a bit of string, faded to the colour of weak tea, with a name in a stranger's hand: Lenore. Mrs Pell had no idea who Lenore was, but she knew a sorry set when she saw one. The middle cup had a crack running from rim to foot, and the handle of the bottom cup had snapped clean off.

It took her eleven days. She fitted the handle with a wire pin and ran gold lacquer along the crack so the break shone like a river on a map, and every morning the bird sat on the top rim and watched the brush. On the twelfth day she set the stack on the windowsill to cure, and the bird flew down, landed on the gilded seam, and sang a short bright song before the sun cleared the chimneys.

Customers came and went and asked after the set. Mrs Pell only smiled and said the cups were spoken for. She never sold them. In the evenings she filled a dish with water and set it on the saucer, and the bird came back for it, and she let her tea go cold while she listened.