Traditional style colour tattoo on an upper arm showing a corked bottle with a sunset and palm trees, a red rose and green leaves, with an anchor and banner above.

Palm tree bottle and rose on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A corked bottle containing a black and grey palm tree scene with an orange sunset sits at the centre, with green leaves behind it and a red rose below. An anchor with a banner reading C.P. MCMX and a partly visible second rose appear above and to the right. Bold black outlines, solid colour fills and soft shading on the bottle and sky give the piece a classic American traditional look.

Traditional Upper arm Bottle Palm tree Sunset Rose Leaves Anchor Banner Flower

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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

The bottle comes in on the lowest tide of the year, wedged between a sheet of kelp and a boot with no partner. The cork is sealed with grey wax, and someone has wound garden twine round the neck twice, the way you would bind a cut. Inside, rolled tight, is a sheet of ledger paper and a pencil sketch of two palms leaning over a sunset shaded with a thumb.

Keep reading

The letters are squared off like a schoolmaster's. 'If you are reading this, the Marigold struck the reef off Kettle Point on the ninth. Five of us made the south shore. I am with Ada Pryce and the Halloran boy. We have water for four days and a rose bush Ada will not leave behind. Tell the harbour master we are not dead yet. Signed A. Redfern, 1931.' Under the date someone has pressed a red petal flat.

You do not tell the harbour master. You walk the south shore at dusk with the bottle in your coat pocket, past the chapel and the slipway the tide has half taken. Two palms stand where the chart shows only scrub, their trunks bent like men lifting something heavy. Under a flat stone at their roots is a biscuit tin holding a compass, a child's shoe and a second letter addressed to whoever comes next: 'Keep the rose alive. The sea is patient, but we were not.'

You sit on the stone until the sky goes the colour of a clementine. Then you write your own name on the back of Ada's letter, roll it into the empty bottle, rewax the cork with a match and bind the twine twice around the neck. You push it out past the break where the water is still warm enough to hold it. It turns once in the swell, catches the last light, and does not come back.