Back of a hand covered in a dense black geometric star lattice tattoo, with a coloured tattoo visible on the forearm above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric star pattern across the back of a hand

Blackwork · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The back of the hand and the fingers are covered in a dense, repeating lattice of eight-pointed stars drawn in solid black ink, with the uninked skin showing through as pale star shapes. The linework is crisp and even, and the pattern wraps over the knuckles and onto the fingers without obvious breaks. Above the wrist, a larger tattoo in yellow and grey tones is partly visible against a plain black background.

Blackwork Geometric Hand Forearm Star Geometric pattern Lattice Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The frost has come in over the top field again and the ewes are crowding the gate by four o'clock, so I am writing this at the kitchen table with my coat still on. Mr Pryce from the auctioneers came on Tuesday with his clipboard and his cold feet and said the barn would fetch more if the old loft boards were ripped out and sold as scrap. I told him he could have the scrap when I was dead.

You will remember the star pattern Gran painted across the loft ceiling, black lines on whitewash, eight points to every star, the lot of them running one into the next until you could not tell where one ended. She did it the winter after Grandad died, with a pot of soot and linseed and a ruler she kept in her apron. When the whitewash flaked, the stars showed pale against the black, like holes punched through to some other night. I used to lie on the hay bales counting them and always lost my place.

Last night I took a lamp up the ladder with a bread knife and a tin of cold tea and started tracing the nearest one, so that at least one would be kept somewhere that is not a skip in Market Rasen. I have done four so far. My hands are not steady enough to make them neat, but Gran's were not either, I am quite sure of it now.

Come up before the sale if you can. Bring the good saw. The fourth star is nearly finished and I want you to tell me whether it is true.

Love, Maud