Small black outline tattoo of a claddagh, two hands holding a crowned heart, on the upper back near the neck.

Claddagh on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small claddagh design is tattooed on the upper back, showing two hands clasping a heart topped with a crown. The lines are thin, dark and evenly drawn, with little or no shading, and the heart is left unfilled. The photo is taken from behind and above, with the wearer's hair in a bun and a blue patterned strap across the frame.

Fine line Back Heart Crown 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

Tomas Dalton had cut the crown three times before Mrs Keane would let it leave the counter. Each attempt came back across the glass with a tap of her ringed finger, the way a fishwife checks a catch. "Hands are easy," she said. "Any fool can make a pair of hands. The crown is what says the trust was given fair."

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The shop on Quay Street smelt of rouge and hot solder. Rain came sideways off Galway Bay and rattled the window, and each time the bell over the door rang, Tomas lifted his head from the bench with his loupe still in his eye. Mrs Keane's sister had married a man from Inishbofin who never came home the spring his boat went down off the Aran rocks. She had brought her old ring in wrapped in a handkerchief and asked for a copy cut small enough for her granddaughter's finger.

The commission that followed was for a brooch, to be pinned inside a coat for a girl sailing to Boston on the Tuesday steamer. Mrs Keane insisted on one thing. The heart was to stay hollow, polished but unfilled, so whoever wore it could decide what went inside. Tomas argued that an empty heart looked like a mistake. She only smiled and paid him in coppers.

Eleven years later a woman in a grey mackintosh came in with the brooch on her lapel, worn thin at the pin. She set it on the glass and said the heart had held up well. Tomas looked at the empty space, then at the rain, and found he had nothing to add to what the silver already said.