Black and grey dotwork tattoo of an eye inside a radiating sunburst on the forearm, with a hand curled at the top of the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eye within a dotwork sunburst on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistically drawn eye with a shaded iris and lid sits at the centre of a circular sunburst of pointed rays. The rays and surrounding area are built from stippled dots and fine lines, with solid black tips creating contrast. The tattoo is shown in black and grey against a patterned wallpaper background, with the hand and wrist filling the top of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hester,

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You will not believe what Mr Ansell left behind in Room Four. He went off on the Tuesday boat without settling his account, which I forgive him, because he left a brass lamp-shade the size of a cartwheel, all rays and points, and under the glass of it a painted eye he had copied from something in a Dutch almanac. Ma says it is bad luck to keep a thing that watches, so I have been keeping it in the scullery, face to the wall.

Last night the wind came round to the north-east and the bulb in the front parlour fizzed and died. I took a candle up to the landing to fetch the spare, and the light caught the shade where I had propped it on the linen press. The rays threw their shadows across the ceiling in a ring, dotted where the pattern was pierced, and the eye in the middle seemed to open. I stood there longer than I care to admit, counting the points like a child counting sheep, until the candle guttered and I was in the dark with the sea going at the shingle below.

I have decided to hang it over the door of the boarding house, facing the harbour. Nobody wants a watchful thing in their bedroom, but the fishermen want to know the house is awake when they come in off the tide. Ma says I am being fanciful. Mr Okafor from Number Nine says it is a fine piece of work and offered two shillings for it, which I turned down, because I have grown rather fond of the thing.

Write soon, and tell me whether Father's lighthouse ever had a lamp like it.

Your loving sister, Edith

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