Black ink mandala and lace-style tattoo across the back of a hand and down the wrist and forearm, in a blackwork style.

Black mandala lace tattoo on hand and wrist

Blackwork · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A large floral mandala sits on the back of the hand and flows down onto the wrist, with scrolling paisley-like swirls and a lattice of fine lines beneath. The design is built from bold solid black linework and filled petals, with negative space between the shapes giving a lace-like effect. The image is all black ink on a dark background, with a pale fingernail visible at the top left.

Blackwork Botanical Hand Forearm Mandala Lace Flower Swirl Paisley Leaf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The veil had to be finished by Saturday, and on Thursday night I still had three hundred bobbins clacking on the pillow in the front room while Mother sat with her spectacles pushed up and the pricking spread across her knees. Nell was getting married at St Michael's in Honiton, and she wanted a mandala of petals over the crown of the veil, with the swirling fern shapes falling down either side like something growing out of the net. Mother had copied the central rose from a tile in the church porch, tracing it on greaseproof paper while the vicar's wife watched from the doorway and said it was far too ambitious for a girl who had only learned bobbin lace the winter before.

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The trouble was the lattice. Every ground stitch had to sit exactly where the pins said, or the open spaces would tighten and the whole flower would pucker like wet paper. I worked late with a candle and a cup of cold tea, and somewhere after midnight I found I had skipped one pinhole near the outer petal. It was a small thing, a square of ground no larger than a fingernail, and I could have unpicked the row in ten minutes. Instead I left it open and tied off the threads, and I said nothing when Mother came in at six to check the work.

She held the veil up to the window for a long time. Then she folded it into tissue paper and put it in the box without a word.

At the wedding, Nell stood in the porch while the bells went quiet. The March sun came through the stained glass and through the one gap in my lace, and it fell across the flagstones in a small bright petal, exactly where Nell's feet would be when she reached the altar. Mother saw it before anyone else did, and she squeezed my hand so hard the bobbin I was still carrying dug into my palm.