Black and grey pencil drawing of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, two shaded roses and a TIMELESS banner, presented as a tattoo design.

Pocket watch and roses with TIMELESS banner

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed drawing of an open pocket watch with Roman numerals and a looped chain at the top, flanked by two shaded roses. A curled banner across the bottom reads TIMELESS in bold lettering. The work uses fine pencil-style shading and soft grey gradients on a plain white background.

Traditional Pocket watch Clock Rose Banner Lettering Roman numeral

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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 clock in the lobby of Harrow Point had said twenty to four since the spring the council stopped paying the caretaker. Nobody else seemed to notice. Half the residents on the fourteenth floor worked nights, and the other half had never once looked up at the wall above the post boxes, so when Mr Okafor from flat 9 asked me to see to it, I brought my father's pocket watch along in case I needed a proper comparison.

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The watch is silver gone soft at the edges, with a chain that loops twice through the bow and a lid that won't shut properly any more. Dad bought it from a man outside Stockport market in 1978 and swore it was worth more than the van. There are two roses scratched on the back, badly done, because he engraved them himself with a darning needle. I eased the lobby clock's face off with a butter knife and a borrowed screwdriver, and the escapement was clogged with decades of lint from the building's old carpets.

I worked until my fingers ached, comparing the two faces under the strip light. The lobby clock ran fast once it started, then slowed when I nudged the hairspring with the tip of a pin, the way Dad used to swear at the radio. By nine o'clock it was keeping the same time as the watch, which was four minutes behind the BBC, the only honest thing I know about either of them.

Mr Okafor came down in his slippers to look. He read the lettering on the banner of my father's watch aloud, since I had never told him what it said. TIMELESS, he said, and laughed. I told him the jeweller had charged Dad extra for the lettering. He handed the watch back without a word. Upstairs the lift began to move again, and for the first time in years I heard the wall clock tick.