Black blackletter lettering arranged in a diamond shape, appearing to spell earth, air, fire and water, shown as a flat design drawing with no body placement.

Earth, air, fire and water blackletter design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A diamond-shaped arrangement of ornate blackletter lettering in solid black ink on a white background. The words appear to read earth, air, fire and water, with the letters interlocking and rotated to fill the diamond. The linework is bold and filled, with sharp pointed strokes and decorative flourishes, and there is no shading or colour.

Lettering Earth Fire Water Blackletter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The diamond would not close. Mr Ferriby had chalked the four words on the board three times that Tuesday, and each time the W of water ran into the E of earth like two carts meeting at a narrow gate. 'Stop fretting at it, lad,' he said, not looking up from his pot. 'Blackletter doesn't want to be read straight. It wants to be argued with.'

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I had been told to pen the thing onto the ironmonger's window at Carrick Bridge by Saturday, gold leaf to follow, and Mr Haigh had already paid a deposit in silver shillings he counted twice. So I sat on the upturned crate with the nib held at the angle the old man had taught me, forty-five degrees and no more, and let the strokes go sharp at their points the way the hand wants to. Earth went down the left side, air came back up the right, and fire and water had to be bent round them like rope round a bollard.

By Thursday night the diamond closed. I stepped back into the cold shop and the four words sat there in their black spikes, each one lying on its side and holding the next one up. I could not read a single one of them without tilting my head, and that seemed to be the point. Mr Ferriby came to stand behind me, wiping his fingers on a rag.

'Water's the one that gets everyone,' he said. 'Look where it ends.'

I looked. The last stroke of the W ran down and stopped just short of the earth, like something that had been sent for and had decided to wait outside.