Black and grey geisha portrait tattoo with a flower hair ornament on the back of a hand, with smoky swirling shading on the forearm above.

Geisha portrait tattoo on the back of a hand

Neo-trad · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face framed by dark swept-back hair, a decorative comb and a large flower pinned above her ear, tattooed across the back of a hand. The face is shaded smoothly with bold outlines around the eyes and lips, and the hair and ornament use contrasting black and white highlights. Swirling grey shading on the forearm above continues the composition, and the whole piece is in black ink and greys.

Neo-trad Japanese Hand Woman Geisha Face Flower Hair ornament Hair Lip Portrait Smoke

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The February frost had got into the water trough again, so you broke the skin of ice with the heel of your boot before carrying the bucket across the yard. Your father's lantern swung from the shed hook. Inside, the ewe in pen four had turned her face to the wall and would not look at the lamb steaming on the straw beside her.

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You had been taught the old ways in the kitchen: rub the dead one's skin over the living one, tie on a coat that smells of the mother. Your mother's hands had always known such things. In the biscuit tin under the dresser, beneath the spare buttons and perished rubber bands, lay the silk square she had bought at Keighley market from a man who swore it had come off a ship from Kobe. A woman looked out from the print, a black lacquered comb in her hair, a white blossom pinned above one ear, her mouth a single dark shape.

You knotted the silk round the orphan and held it to the ewe's nose until she sniffed, then sniffed again, slower, the way she did when she was deciding. Smoke from the stove rolled along the rafters and settled into the corners. Behind you the dog shook snow from its coat and sighed.

By four o'clock the lamb was feeding. You sat on the upturned bucket with your collar up and watched the grey light creep under the barn door. Your mother used to say the woman in the scarf had kept her face turned from everyone on purpose, so no one could read what she was thinking. You picked a single strand of straw from the blossom, tucked it in your pocket, and decided that was a fair thing to keep.