Black and grey botanical tattoo with flowers, leaves and a stylised face with closed eyes, running down a calf.

Floral and face design on a calf

Botanical · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo runs down the lower leg, combining large flowers and leaves at the top with a stylised female face with closed eyes below. Ornamental mandala-like patterns and fine vines fill the space around the face. The linework is crisp and the face uses soft grey shading, while the surrounding flowers are mostly outlined with light fill.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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You will not believe what the institute committee has done with the coal fund money. They have hired a painter from Newcastle, a thin man with ink on his cuffs who arrived on the Tuesday bus with a trunk of brushes and no proper coat. Mrs Hedley says he came recommended by a chapel in Sunderland, though nobody has written to ask. He has spent four days on a ladder above the reading room, painting a woman's face into the plaster rose over the stove.

She has her eyes shut. Every one of us has stood under her and wondered why anyone would paint a face asleep when the whole place is so wide awake with worry. Around her he has put lotus flowers, fat ones, petals curling like the lamp shades in Mr Bell's front room, and between them the finest vines you ever saw, looping and knotting into rings that go round and round like the mandala Mam used to stitch on the hearthrug. The men say it is heathen. Dad says it is only pretty, which from him is a sermon.

Last night, after the shift whistle, Tom sat on the bench beneath her with his helmet in his lap and said nothing for an hour. Then he said the plaster looked like it was breathing out. I told him it was the damp. He said that was what breathing was.

I have not decided whether the painter was mocking us or blessing us. Come home at Easter and see for yourself. Tell Mam the flowers are much better than the ones on her tea set.

Love, Nell

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