Shaded neo-traditional tattoo of a top hat, playing card and chained pocket watch on the chest, in black, grey and brown ink.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Top hat and pocket watch on chest

Neo-trad · Chest · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a top hat tilted to the right, with a playing card marked 10/6 tucked into its band and a chained pocket watch with Roman numerals hanging to the left. The forms are rendered with smooth grey and dark shading, bold outlines and highlights on the metal and hat surfaces. Warm brown tones appear on the watch and hat, set against pale skin on a bare chest.

Neo-trad Chest Top hat Pocket watch Playing card Chain 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 proving drawer has been warm since four, and the watch on the nail above the sink says twenty to five, though you know it runs eleven minutes fast because Mrs Okafor's father set it that way in 1974 and nobody has had the nerve to change it. Flour sits in the creases of your knuckles. Outside, the high street is still the colour of wet slate.

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Your uncle's top hat hangs on the peg by the back door, its band gone grey from years of cooling trays of morning buns. He never wore it to the shop. He said a baker's head should be the coolest thing in the room, and then he would tip it at the customers like a music hall conjuror. The card he tucked into the band forty years ago, a ten and a six, has gone soft as bread crust. Nobody remembers why it was there. You suspect he didn't either.

By six the oven has the right roar and the first loaves go in with a slash each, the way he taught you, one clean line so they can open without splitting. You stop checking the watch. The fourth tray comes out burnished and tight, and you notice the chain has been looped around your wrist for an hour without your noticing it at all.