Mixed-colour tattoo on a shoulder and upper arm, with black lace-like ornament, pink and purple flowers, dangling chains, an anchor charm and a feather.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black lace and pink flower shoulder piece

Blackwork · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm, combining black lace-like ornamental linework with pink and purple flowers at the top. Fine chains hang from the lace, with a small anchor charm and a dark feather with lilac tones at the lower end. The black areas are solid and bold, while the pink and purple areas are softly shaded.

Blackwork Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Lace Flower Chain Anchor Feather Pink flower Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Oswin,

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The lace came down off the gantry this morning, black as tar and twice as heavy with salt, and I spent the whole forenoon untangling it from the winch cable with Mother's old pliers. You would have laughed. It had grown barnacles in its loops as if it meant to stay. Yet the pink blooms at the top, the ones the glassworks in Tilbury grew for the orbital hospices, had kept their colour through three winters in the brine. I keep thinking that is the only sensible thing anybody has done since the tide came over the Embankment.

The anchor charm still swings where Dad hung it, though the chain is new. I replaced the old links with ones salvaged from the Harwich cranes, so the hanging part is younger than the lace. Mr Adeyemi at the workshop says that is how you know a repair is honest: it shows its joins. He also says the feather on the end came from a gull that flew into the solar mast the year before the storms, which I doubt, but I like the story.

Here is the real reason I am writing. The Halcyon is in dock at Gravesend and her captain wants crew who can read the old charts. I told him you could. I did not ask you first, which I know is unfair, so you may tell him no and I will not sulk for more than a week. Only come home before the spring tides, because the lace wants someone to hold it steady while I rethread the last of the chains, and my hands are not what they were.

Love, Ada