Fine line drawing of two hands in black outline on a white background, one resting in the cupped palm of the other.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Line drawing of two cupped hands

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A continuous black outline drawing of two hands, one held low and open while the other rests on it with the fingers curled. The linework is even and unshaded, with no fill or texture. The plain white background and centred composition leave the hands as the only subject.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now, you'll want to hush, because the bride's aunt has been waiting thirty years to hear this told properly. There was a potter in Stow-on-the-Wold called Abel Frith, and he made bowls so thin you could read the racing page through them. Nobody in the village ever saw him sell one. He gave them away at weddings, every one, and told each couple the same thing: hold it like this, one hand underneath and the other curled over the top, and it will never break in your keeping.

Keep reading

His own wife, Mary Ellen, was the sharper of the two. She had a laugh like a dropped tray and no patience for his nonsense. The winter she took ill, he sat by the kiln with a bowl in his lap, cupping it just so, and would not put it down. The doctor said he was wearing a groove in the clay. Mary Ellen told him to put a stopper in his pride.

When spring came round she was on her feet again, and it was she who did the holding. She took his big rough palm in both of hers, low and open, and set her own fingers curled above it like a lid. 'There,' she said. 'Now you're the one to be kept.' He never got the bowl back from his lap, and folk say it still sits on the mantel in that cottage, empty, because nobody in the family will tip it out.

So when you lift your glass, lift it the way he did. Low hand, high hand, and nothing spilt.

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