Black and grey engraved-style tattoo of a coffee mug with curling steam, reading Death Before Decaf, on an arm.

Coffee mug reading Death Before Decaf

Other · Mixed · Photo

A coffee mug with curling steam rising from it, drawn in an engraving style with dense hatching and cross-hatching for shading. The words DEATH Before DECAF run across the mug in a serif typeface, and a second line of curved lettering is only partly visible at the bottom of the frame. The main design is black and grey, with coloured tattoo work visible at the edges of the photo.

Other Steam Lettering Text Engraving

Find an artist for this

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

Dorothy Pruitt had poured Sheriff Lyle the same cup every morning since the spring of 1951, black and strong enough to stand a spoon in, and he had never once complained about it. So when he walked into the Blue Plate at half past six on a Tuesday and found a fresh pot on the warmer with a strip of masking tape across the lid, he squinted at the handwriting before he sat down. DECAF, it said, in her careful capitals.

Keep reading

"You trying to finish me off, Dot?" he asked. She didn't answer. She took the thick white mug from the rack, the one with the old printed motto under the glaze, and filled it slowly so the steam rose in long curling ribbons past the menu board and the faded calendar from the feed store. She set it in front of him with the handle turned toward his right hand, the way his father used to like it.

He lifted it and blew across the top. Outside, a truck rattled past carrying the Hollis boys and their dogs toward the reservoir, and down Main Street the church bell began its squeaky warm-up for eight o'clock. Lyle drank, set the mug down, and turned it on its saucer until the words faced him. "Don't recall the Good Book saying anything about decaf."

Dot wiped a counter that was already clean. "Doctor Amsel says your heart's been skipping since Easter," she said. "Doesn't mean you have to stop living like a man who isn't scared of it." He looked into the cup for a long while, then pushed a dime across the Formica toward her and left the rest of it cooling, which in twelve years at the Blue Plate he had never once done.