Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a frilled lizard above crossed bare legs, set within an art nouveau frame on the thigh.

Frilled lizard in an art nouveau frame

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows a frilled lizard with its frill spread, shaded with fine stippling above a pair of crossed bare legs resting on a shell-like base. Stars sit in the dark background behind the lizard, and the whole piece is enclosed in an ornate art nouveau frame with fine linework. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and is centred vertically on the thigh.

Dotwork Neo-trad Thigh Lizard Star Shell

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the Kessler Brothers Travelling Marvel has finally folded its last canvas outside Doncaster, and I am writing to you from the back of the wagon with the lamp turned low so the moths can have their evening and I can have mine. The elephants went to a farmer near Selby on Tuesday. The lion is bound for a zoo in Shropshire that promised him a proper straw bed. The bills still promise the Eighth Wonder of the World, but the only wonder left is that Hector can still swallow fire without setting his moustache alight.

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The real star was always Ottoline, the frilled lizard Mr Pim bought off a dealer in Liverpool for nine pounds and a bad cigar. When the band struck up the waltz she would lift her collar like a Parisian ballgown and the front row would gasp. Clara used to sit beside her on the painted scallop shell, legs crossed at the ankle, and hold a single lamp above them both. It was the only act that never needed a second show to sell out, because nobody could quite believe what they had seen.

Last night in Pontefract we had four paying customers and a spaniel. Ottoline still went up on her hind legs under the stars Mr Pim had painted on the tent roof, and spread her frill until it nearly touched the sawdust. The spaniel barked once and then sat down to watch. Mr Pim wept into his top hat and said it was the dust, though there was no dust, only the damp that comes off the Aire at night.

I have kept her in the spare crate with a towel and a dish of crickets. Tomorrow we turn the van north for Whitby, where the sea wind is said to lift the frills of anything that stands still long enough. Mr Pim says she will want a proper stage. I think she has had one, and I am going to let her rest on the windowsill of my little room above the chandler's, where the sky is always too big and too black to be painted. Write soon, and tell Mother I have not forgotten her birthday. Your loving sister, Mabel.