Greyscale pencil design sketch of a clock face with Roman numerals, feathered wings, peony flowers and leaves, drawn in a neo-traditional style for a sleeve.

Clock, wings and peonies sleeve design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a clock face with Roman numerals and a ribbon wrapped around it, flanked by feathered wings at the top and bottom. Peony flowers and leaves fill the gaps, and the design is built from heavy shading and clean outlines. The artwork is entirely black and grey on a cream, aged paper background, with the composition arranged as a tall panel suited to a sleeve.

Neo-trad Botanical Clock Roman numeral Wing Feather Peony Flower Leaves Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had until four o'clock to get the ballroom clock running, because at four the bride's father would walk his daughter past it and into the marriage hall. The movement had been stopped since 1962, when, according to the hotel ledger, somebody had wound it too far and snapped the mainspring. Ruth knelt on the carpet with her loupe in one eye and a tray of brass pins by her knee, sorting them by size the way her mother had taught her.

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The wedding planner, a nervous woman called Jo Platt with a clipboard pressed to her chest, kept appearing at the doorway to ask whether the clock would chime, because the photographer wanted it in the frame. "It will tick," Ruth said. "Chiming is a different matter. Chimes want a little faith." Behind the glass the Roman numerals had yellowed like old teeth, and someone had once tied a blue ribbon around the case, now brittle as a pressed flower. Ruth lifted it away and folded it into her breast pocket without quite knowing why.

By half past three the escapement caught. The second hand jerked, hesitated, then went round. Ruth sat back on her heels and listened to the small, tidy sound of a thing remembering what it was for. Jo came in at a run, saw the hands moving, and burst into tears, which Ruth thought a fair response.

At four the doors opened. The bride walked beneath the clock with her father's arm through hers, and Ruth, standing by the coat stand with oil on her cuffs, watched the minute hand reach the twelve. Only then did she take the blue ribbon from her pocket and knot it around the handle of her bag, where it hung in a faint line, swinging with every step she took towards the door.