Studio photo of a bare leg and foot with gold metallic ornamental designs, including scrollwork, a crown motif and a snake, on the calf, ankle and hand.

Gold metallic temporary designs on a leg

Calf · Colour · Photo

A bare leg, hand and foot are photographed against a white background, with the skin shown in close detail. Gold metallic damask-style ornaments, a crown motif, a snake and scrolling leaf shapes run from the wrist and hand down the calf and ankle towards the toes. The designs are flat and solid in metallic gold, with a soft reflection beneath the foot.

Calf Ankle Hand Crown Snake Scroll Leaf Ornament Foot Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass stencil had been cut so many times that the crown along its top edge had worn thin as a fingernail, and Maud Pryor held it up to the north window to check the light still came through the lacework of the damask. "Again," said Mr Okonedo from the far bench, without looking up. "The leaves have to lie flat, or the gold won't take."

Keep reading

The commission was for a Bristol townhouse whose ballroom cornice had been stripped back to bare plaster. The restorers wanted the old scrolls brought back in gold size and leaf, laid by hand, and the pattern book they had sent over was full of foxed paper and pencil ghosts. The serpent was the trouble. Someone long dead had drawn it coiled around a stem, its head lifted as if it had heard its name, and nobody in the shop could decide whether it was meant to look like a warning or a decoration.

Maud cut it twice. The first version looked too pleased with itself, so she gave the second a tail that doubled back under the coil, a small hesitation in the line. Okonedo ran his thumb over it, said nothing, and handed her the gilder's tip.

On the last afternoon she laid the transfer sheets out on a pane of glass, breathed on each one, and pressed. When she peeled the paper back the gold came away clean, and on the floor below the window the sun made a second set of ornaments that wavered every time someone walked past. She kept one sheet for herself, the serpent curled the wrong way, and slid it between the pages of her notebook where it could not be seen.