Black lace-style tattoo with scrollwork and netting running down a woman's back from the upper back to the side.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black lace tattoo across a back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large black lace-patterned tattoo curves from the upper back down towards the lower side of the body, with scrolling leaves, dotted motifs and fine netting. The linework is bold in the main sections and finer in the netting, filled in solid black with no grey shading. The bare skin around it is warm-toned and the composition is taken from behind, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

Keep reading

The rain has been coming sideways across the Saturday market since seven, and I have had the awning up for three hours just to keep the bobbins dry. Mr Pryce from the fish stall says it will clear by noon. He said that last Saturday too.

Your mother's pillow was on the table this morning, the one with the Honiton sprig, and a man from Exeter stopped to finger the edge and asked whether it was machine work. I told him it had taken her eleven months and a summer of sore thumbs. He put it down as if it had burned him. I did not mind. The thread knows what it is.

I have been thinking about the netting in the last piece she made, the fine ground that holds everything up, and how she never let the holes go uneven however tired her eyes were. Half the trouble with lace is the gaps, not the pattern. Anyone can draw a leaf. Keeping the mesh true takes a steadier hand than most people have.

So I have started on the long length you asked about, the one that runs from a single scrolled leaf down the edge of a sleeve to the hem. I have pinned the first curl. It keeps wanting to bow outwards like a wave going under, and I have to keep coaxing it back. By the time the rain stops I expect it will look nothing like I planned, which is how she always said the good ones went.

Come home on the Thursday train if you can. Bring the wool bobbins from the drawer. I will leave the awning down for you.

Love, Nan

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