Black and grey engraved-style crest tattoo with a lion-like figure and a curling banner bearing partly visible lettering, on the inner forearm.

Engraved crest with banner on forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large crest with a shield-shaped centre sits across the forearm, surrounded by a curling banner that carries partly visible lettering. The linework is bold and outlined, with fine hatching and stippled shading that gives the crest an engraved, illustrative look. The image is taken at an angle on a wooden floor, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Forearm Crest Shield Banner Lettering Lion Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the proof came off the press this morning and Mr Haddow held it up to the window like a jeweller checking a stone for flaws. Every line of the crest is cut by hand. The lion has to look as if he is thinking about his dinner, he said, and I believe I got him right on the third try.

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The banner is the difficulty. Haddow wants the Latin running round the curl, DORMIENS, so the company's ledgers can claim the firm is only sleeping, and I told him a thing that sleeps can still be woken. He laughed and said I was becoming a poet on the night shift. I have been on nights since Michaelmas, watching the furnace bank down and listening to the river under the wharf. The old shield had a tower in its centre that nobody here remembers, so I cut the tower again from the drawing in the back room, though someone's thumb had left a grey smudge across one corner of it.

Last night a van came for the old plates, the ones with the wrong motto, and the driver asked why we bothered keeping them at all. I said the shield is only lines, and lines are what stop a thing from being forgotten. He didn't follow, and I didn't mind. I kept the smallest plate in my coat, the lion's face in brass, and it stayed warm against my ribs all the way home.

Come up at Christmas if the trains run. I'll show you the proof and you can tell me whether the hatching in the mane is too heavy. Mind the stair on the second landing, it still tips. Your brother, Tom.