Realistic black and grey tattoo of a bearded classical bust covering the back of a hand, with the fingers forming the beard.

Classical bearded bust tattoo on the hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic tattoo of a bearded classical male bust, with curly hair and a carved-looking brow, covers the back of a hand and the fingers are worked into the beard. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft greys and dark shadows that give the stone-like face depth. The hand rests on white paper towel, with a tattooed forearm visible above and a printed statue image in the background.

Realism Hand Curly hair Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bust came up in a fishing net off Porthleven in March, wrapped in weed and a rusted chain, and nobody in the harbour office wanted it. Old Ezra Tregaskis had it carried up the slip on a hand cart because he said a face like that should not be left to the gulls. I was the only one at the museum store who could still mix lime mortar, so the job landed on my bench.

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The beard was the first thing I cleaned. Under the grime each curl had been cut with a drill, deep and patient, and the brow had a heaviness that made the whole head look as if it were thinking about something it would not say. Ezra came by every afternoon with a flask of tea and asked whether it had a name. I told him the base plate read nothing but a number scratched in pencil. He said the sea gives you a number and takes the name.

On the last Friday I found a thread of copper wire wound through one curl at the back, the kind a fisherman uses to mend a pot. Someone had tied the bust to something once, or had held it steady while the tide went out. I put the wire in my pocket without thinking.

Ezra died in May. At the funeral his daughter gave me a box with the copper wire coiled inside and a note in his square hand: Return the beard to the sea, not the shelf. So I did. On the quay at the turn of the tide, the stone face caught the light once more before it went under.