Black and grey drawing of a stylised phoenix with lace-like filigree wings and curling tail feathers on a white background, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Filigree phoenix design in black and grey

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised phoenix or bird in profile, with its head turned to the left, a curved beak and a long sweeping tail that trails into curling scrolls. The wings are filled with fine lace-like patterns and delicate linework, contrasted with solid black areas on the body and tail. The drawing is in black ink and grey tones on a plain white background, centred in the frame.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Scroll Filigree Lace pattern

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

Your grandfather would have laughed at me for sitting up until two with the lamp pulled close, but the veil is finished, and I have pinned it to the old square pillow so you can see the bird before it goes in the box. I worked the phoenix into the left wing the way my mother taught me, bobbins clicking like a clock that has lost its patience. Its head is turned back over one shoulder, the way a creature looks at what it is leaving, and its tail runs down into scrolls so fine that Mrs Okafor at the guild said she could not tell where one curl ended and the next began.

I meant to use gold for the body. The pattern book from Beeston had gold on the cover, but the shop was out of it by the time I went in after your mother's wedding, so I bought black silk instead and was cross with myself for a week. Then the wing panels came out grey, a smoky grey like the sky over the Trent before rain, and I thought, well, that is what it is. A bird made from what is left after a fire is not going to be gold. It will be black where it has been burned and lace where it has been mended.

I left one loose end at the bottom of the last scroll, and I want you to know it is deliberate. My mother did the same on her pillow, and when I asked her why, she only said that a thing finished too neatly has nowhere left to go. So you will find a single thread hanging there. Snip it if it troubles you, but I would not.

Your loving Gran, Edith