Close-up of a woman with her hands clasped in front of her, both arms covered in black ornamental blackwork and dotwork sleeve tattoos.

Black ornamental sleeves with hands clasped

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman stands with her hands pressed together at chest height, her face cropped out of frame so only her lips and chin show. Both arms are covered from the upper arm to the wrist in dense black ornamental designs made of scrollwork, leaf-like shapes, lace-edged bands and stippled dotwork fills. The image is warm-toned and dimly lit, with the black ink standing out sharply against the skin.

Blackwork Dotwork Upper arm Forearm Mandala Ornament Scrollwork Leaves Lace pattern Sleeve Pattern Long hair Hand

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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

Mother, the pattern came back again this morning, pinned under the workroom door with no name on it, and I have had it on the table since first light tracing its edge with one finger like a fool. It is the same design as the one Ellen Marsh sewed into her Sunday cuffs last winter, but larger now, and it has grown a new band of lace at the elbow where the scrolls turn inward like young ferns.

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You will remember how the old bobbin-makers worked from the wrist upward, so the pattern never ends and never starts. Every leaf is shaped like a seed that has decided to open. The dots are not dots at all when you look close with the glass. They are tiny hollows, pricked one after another, and each one has a bead of dew in it when the workroom is cold. Ellen says it is the pattern the wood gave to the first girls who stayed late to finish their work, and that the mill only copied it badly.

I counted the bobbins this evening. There is one more than we have girls. I took the lamp down the path past the coppiced hazel, and there, on a row of pegs where nobody has set anything for thirty years, someone had wound thread onto every one. The thread was still damp. On the bark beside them the same design had been pricked out in small pale holes, and it ran all the way round a trunk and back again.

I have started copying it onto the lining of my own sleeve tonight, one dot at a time, because it fits my wrist so exactly that I can hardly think of anything else. Do not send the carter for me yet. The pattern is very patient, and I find I am in no hurry to reach the end of it.