Black script lettering on a white background in a flowing calligraphic style, with a large decorative initial letter, set out as a design for a lettering tattoo.

Calligraphic script quote design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black script quotation is set over four lines, with a large decorative capital at the start of the second line and a more ornate capital at the start of the third. The copperplate-style linework is fine and even, with consistent thick and thin strokes and generous spacing on a plain white background. The composition is left-aligned with indented lines, and there is no body part or skin visible.

Lettering Script Quote Calligraphy Text

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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

You learn the lock at Hatton before you learn your letters, the way the gates groan and the water drops away under the boat like a held breath. Your father steers the Mary Ellen with one hand and a pipe in the other, and when the cabin cat gets under the coal he says nothing, only looks at you until you go and fetch the broom. You are small enough that the other boatmen's children call you Sprat. You do not answer to it.

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The schoolmistress at Braunston sends a note home in October. You have bitten a boy who put a frog in your satchel, and you have said things to the vicar's wife that she repeats at the chapel tea. Your mother reads the note twice, folds it into her apron pocket, and tells you a girl who answers back is not a girl who gets a bad name. She says it as though she is proud. You stand by the stove and do not cry, because crying would hand the boy his victory, and you decided at six that nobody gets that from you.

Years later the boy's family is moored behind yours at Stoke Bruerne, and he is the one who passes you the windlass when your fingers are too cold to close around it. He does not say sorry. He says the lock is yours, Sprat, and steps back onto the towpath to let you work it. You wind the paddles up slow and steady, and the gates swing open on the grey water, and you do not look round to see whether he is watching.