Pencil flash design of a traditional-style pocket watch with roses, leaves and a banner reading Mom and Dad.

Pocket watch and roses with Mom and Dad banner

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of an ornate pocket watch with Roman numerals and a scrolled case, framed by two large open roses and several leaves. A curled banner across the lower left reads Mom and Dad, and small beaded dots sit around the design. The shading is soft grey pencil on white paper, with the outlines drawn in darker graphite.

Traditional Pocket watch Rose Leaves Banner Roman numeral Mom Dad Bead

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

You climb the tower stair with the winding key in your fist, counting steps the way Brother Oswin taught you: twelve turns to the landing and nine more to the chamber where the great clock keeps its slow argument with the afternoon. Below, the cloister roses have gone brown at the edges, and Compline has already been rung, so the house is quiet except for the ticking.

Keep reading

Oswin's pocket watch lies on the sill where he left it the morning he died, its silver case worn smooth at the hinge. You pick it up. Its hands read a quarter to four while the great clock says a quarter past. Oswin always said a watch that agrees with the world is only copying it. He had carried it since his mother pressed it into his palm at the gate of a Wakefield foundry, and the numerals were so faded he needed the lamp to read them.

You open the case. Folded inside is a scrap of wafer paper, and on it, in his cramped hand: Mam and Dad, both under the roses in the south garden, both kept better time than I ever did. Beneath that, one more line: Set it to them, not to the bell. You stand a long while with the key. Then you wind the great clock forward by a quarter hour, so that it matches the watch and the bell has to chase after it.

In the morning the brothers grumble that matins came late. You say nothing. In the garden the roses have opened in the wrong light, and the watch ticks against your palm, keeping its own counsel.