Pencil sketch of a compass rose with labelled points inside an ornate pocket watch case with a beaded chain, drawn as a tattoo design.

Compass rose in an ornate pocket watch

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of an ornate pocket compass with a beaded chain and loop at the top. The compass rose sits at the centre with labelled points N, NE, E, NW, W and SW, and a fleur-de-lis at its hub. Scrolling foliage and shading fill the lower and right sides of the case, rendered in soft grey pencil with fine hatching.

Compass Compass rose Pocket watch Chain Fleur-de-lis Scroll Cardinal points Filigree

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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

Sit yourself down by the stove, lad, and mind the kettle, the wind's come round to the north-east and it finds every crack in this tower. Reach me that case off the hook. Aye, the brass one. My grandfather carried it up these stairs every night for thirty-one years and never once let the lamp go dark while it was in his pocket.

Keep reading

Look at the face of it. North at the top, bold as you like, then the rest fanned out round the rose like spokes on a cart wheel. Those scrolls on the side aren't for show either. The man who made it had been at sea, you can tell by the way he's laid the leaves round the rim, like weed on a hull. The lily in the middle is the French mark. Grandfather said it was bought in Brest by a widower who wanted something to keep his hands busy.

The winter of the great fog, the Porthgwidden boat came in blind, two men gone off the bar in the dark. Grandfather snapped the lid open, held the case flat on his palm and waited while the rose settled. South-west, it said, steady as a hymn. He walked the cliff path with a rope round his waist and a lantern he didn't need, and he found the nearer of the two men clinging to the weed at the foot of the rocks.

I'll tell you the secret, though you mustn't tell your mother. The needle was never what saved anyone. He only trusted it because he'd stopped staring at the sea long enough to hear it. Now go and fetch the lamp oil, and mind the third step, it's soft as butter.