Black and grey full sleeve tattoo of ornamental scrollwork and leaves on a woman's raised arm, covering the upper arm and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey ornamental full sleeve

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman sits on a cushioned chair outdoors, raising one arm to show a full sleeve tattoo of dense ornamental scrollwork, leaves and swirling motifs. The shading uses black and grey tones with bold outlines and soft gradients across the upper arm and forearm. The tattoo fills most of the frame, with a white t-shirt, denim shorts and a gold watch in the background.

Upper arm Forearm Sleeve Ornament Scrollwork Leaves Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The ironwork came off the Marigold on Tuesday, and Dad has been stripping it since dawn with a wire brush and a face like thunder. You'll remember the tiller bracket, the one with the leaves curling off the scrolls as if they were trying to climb out of the iron. Mr Ashby says it was cast in Stourport before the war and nobody has made a pattern like it since. He wants it kept, so Dad is wrapping each swirl in sacking and tying it off with string, and I am meant to be writing up the inventory instead of sitting on the cabin roof watching the lock fill.

Here is the odd part. Last night Mum found the old pattern book in the bottom of the cratch, the one Granddad kept with his pencil drawings. Every page is ferns and acanthus and little loops that go round on themselves, shaded with the side of a stub of lead so they look like smoke. On the last page he had written, in that cramped hand of his, 'Draw the leaf first, the swirl follows the vein.' I laughed, then I stopped, because I could see the same pattern on the tiller bracket, and I realised he must have sat on this very towpath copying it.

Dad says the bracket goes on the wall of the workshop at Braunston, not to Mr Ashby's man in Leicester. I think he's right. I'll bring the pattern book when I come down at the weekend, and we can fit the sacking round the bracket together. Tell Ben the lock at Hatton is working again, and the kettle's on whenever you get here.

Love, Ruth