Black flash design of a crown above large letters FOB, with a ribbon banner reading Save Rock and Roll and a small lightning bolt.

Crown over FOB lettering with banner

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey design showing a crown with three dots above it, placed over the large letters FOB. A ribbon banner along the bottom reads SAVE ROCK AND ROLL, with a small lightning bolt in the centre. The bold solid shapes have a speckled, distressed texture, and the composition is symmetrical and centred on a white background.

Lettering Crown Letter Banner Ribbon Lightning bolt Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lettering for Dunmow came out crooked again, and Mr Fenwick says it doesn't matter because the crowd reads the crown before the name anyway. I told him the crown sat on top of the F like a hat on a bad horse, and he laughed until he had to sit down on a feed sack. Three dots above the crown, he wants, to look like the stars that used to hang over the old ring. I painted them in ochre and they look more like spilt gravy, but I haven't told him that.

Keep reading

We lost the second elephant in March and the striped tent has more patches than canvas now. The banner for the final stand is the one you'd have liked. Long strip, red lead for the bolt down the middle, black for the words, and the letters have to be crisp enough to read from the road but tired enough to look like they've been through a hundred seasons. I had to thin the black with turpentine and stipple it with a worn brush, which is the trick you taught me, so at least something of yours is still working.

It rained on the Tuesday, and the banner came out of the drying shed with the paint run into grey freckles all over the lettering. Fenwick stood in the mud looking at it for a long time. Then he said it looked honest, and told me to hang it over the gate before the light went. Eleven people came to the last show. A boy in a borrowed coat counted the paper flags on the ribbon while the band packed up, and I think he was trying to work out how old it was.

Write back when you can. The wagons leave for Carlisle at dawn and I have the crown still to finish.

Yours, Nell