Colour tattoo of a teacup with red floral pattern and green leaves on the shoulder, with a small black bird and script above on the upper chest.

Teacup and bird on shoulder

Traditional · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A teacup with a red floral pattern, green leaves and a saucer sits on the shoulder, with a small black bird in flight and a line of script above it on the upper chest. The teacup has bold black outlines and flat colour fills in red, green and pale blue, while the bird and script are in solid black. The image is a close crop of bare skin and a white top, with a necklace with a green pendant visible at the left edge.

Traditional Shoulder Teacup Flower Leaf Bird Script Saucer

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pour it while it's hot, that's the first rule of this house, and never mind what the Pilgrim sisters told you about milk going in first. Sit where the light comes off the sea. There. Mind the cup, it's the good one, the one with the red poppies climbing up the side as if they're trying to get out of the china.

Keep reading

Your grandfather bought that set off a travelling man in 1931, four cups and a sugar bowl with a chip nobody mentions. He paid with a tin of boot polish and a promise to come back in spring. The man never returned, but a bird did. Every morning a small dark bird sat on the rail outside the scullery and sang the same three notes, and Mrs Penhallow swore it was the travelling man's soul going round the coast looking for his wife.

I'll tell you what happened the summer the cup cracked. The lodger, a clerk from Leeds with ink on his cuffs, dropped it on the flags and stood there staring at the pieces as though the tide had come in through the kitchen. He gathered every shard into his handkerchief. Then he asked the bird what he ought to do, and the bird flew off over the harbour wall and didn't come back for a week.

When it did, he had glued the cup together with fish glue and a good deal of patience, and the poppies ran a little crooked along the seam. Mrs Penhallow poured him tea in it anyway. Drink up now, and mind the seam. That's the honest part.