Traditional style tattoo of a tomahawk forming a cross, with a wood-grain handle, lettering on the blade and a feather with teal beads, on a forearm.

Tomahawk cross with feather on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a tomahawk whose handle forms the upright of a cross, with the axe head across the top. The handle has wood-grain shading and a wrapped cord with teal beads, and a feather hangs from the lower section beside the cross. Brown and tan tones dominate, with grey shading and small teal accents, and the design is set against outdoor grass.

Traditional Forearm Cross Feather Bead Cord Lettering

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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

Sit closer, the wind up Carrow Gap has teeth tonight, and I'll tell it the way my mother told it, with the fire between us and the sheep bells gone quiet.

Keep reading

The hatchet belonged to Thomas Pell Rigg, who hauled salt over that pass when the snow came early. One December he set out with two mules and never reached the far hut. His son Eli was nine years old and would not leave the hatchet behind on the shelf, so he took it, and he took the cord from his mother's old apron ties, and he followed the tracks until the tracks stopped.

The handle cracked against a boulder near the summit. Eli bound the split with the cord, knotting in two teal glass beads he'd won at the Whitsun fair, and he pushed the blade's head into the bank above the cairn so the handle stood up straight against the sky. The last light caught the stamped letters on the blade. Then a hawk came down the wind and dropped a grey feather, which he tied in under the beads. He sat by it all night, singing the one hymn he knew.

At first light his father came over the rise, following the glint of that upright cross, and found him there. Some folk say it's a cross, and some say it's a hatchet with ambitions above its station. I say it's a marker that brought a man home. Now drink up, and mind the third stair on your way to bed, it creaks like a disappointed uncle.