Celtic heart knot tattoo with a bold black outline and bands of green, orange and red ink on pale skin.

Celtic heart knot in green, orange and red

Geometric · Colour · Photo

A heart outline with an interlaced Celtic knot inside, drawn in bold black linework. The heart's outer band is filled with green, then white, then orange and red near the point, so the colours read like stripes across the shape. The tattoo sits centred in the frame against plain, evenly lit skin.

Geometric Heart Celtic knot Interlace Knotwork

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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

Mrs Keogh's boy came into the rope walk on a wet Tuesday with his cap in both hands and asked me for a knot that would never come undone. I told him the sea had its own opinions about that, but he said he wasn't asking the sea.

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I worked it the way my father taught me, one strand laid over, the next tucked under, never letting an end show. The outer curve I made in green hemp, the middle in plain undyed cord, and the point in orange twine I'd bought off the chandler on Canning Street. For the red I unpicked a thread from my mother's wedding sash, which I had no business doing, and tied it in last so it would sit at the bottom where the heart is heaviest. When it was finished it looked less like a charm than a little country folded small and kept dry.

He sailed on the Thursday tide with his wages sewn into the pouch and the pouch threaded through the knot. Three weeks later a parcel came to the walk with no return address. Inside was the knot, salt-stained and grey, the red gone pink at the tips. Pinned to it was a pencilled note: It held. Make me another, and leave the end loose this time.

So I did. I left the last strand free, the way you leave a child's shoelace, and I sent it back down the road to wait for him to come home and pull it.