Traditional style tattoo of a lit oil lamp with a teal glass chimney and orange flame, with black leaves, on the side of the body.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional oil lamp with flame

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A bold traditional tattoo of an oil lamp with a teal glass chimney and orange flame, framed by black leaf shapes. The lamp base has red, yellow and cream banding, and the outlines are thick and black. A partial red bird appears at the bottom edge of the frame.

Traditional Other Flame Leaves Bird

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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 lamp has to be filled before compline, and you have already spilled a thumb's worth of linseed down the brass foot. Brother Anselm does not look up from his psalter. He says the wick drinks whatever it is given, so you had better give it less. You tip the reservoir again, slowly, the way he showed you, and the smell of hot oil rises through the cold scriptorium like a rumour.

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The glass chimney is the only thing in the room that is still blue. Everything else has gone the colour of old candle grease. When the flame stands up straight you can see the ring of orange at its root and the pale heart above it, and you understand why he will not let anyone else trim it. Through the arched window the river is black and loud with the spring melt. Somewhere out on it a ferry is coming back from the far bank with no lantern on its bow, and the whole town knows it, because the ferryman's daughter has stood on the quay since vespers.

A bird knocks at the glass. It is a bullfinch, red as a cardinal's cap, and it has done this every night since Candlemas. Anselm says it is not after the light but after the warmth the light leaves on the sill. You believe him less each time. You dip the scissors, nick the wick to a clean white edge, and turn the key on the brass collar so the flame lifts without smoking.

When you open the shutter the bird is gone and the water has a yellow path across it. You hold the lamp higher. Below, a single oar knocks against a gunwale, twice, then answers. Anselm closes his book and says nothing, which is how you know the wick was the right length after all.