Black ink tattoo on a forearm of a gramophone horn releasing dotted filigree swirls, with a small record player at the end, in dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gramophone and swirls on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a gramophone horn at the right, with ornamental swirls, curls and scrolls flowing from its opening toward the left of the forearm. The linework is fine and black, with stippled dots and shading filling the horn and parts of the scrolls. A small solid record player sits at the lower right, and the design spreads along the forearm against a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The gramophone came in on Tuesday, wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket and smelling of somebody's coal fire. Mr Pallister wants it working for the Whitsun dance at the Cliftonville hall, so I have had my hands in its guts for three days. The horn is the thing. Someone long dead carved it from a sheet of brass and then went over the whole flare with a fine punch, scrolls and curls and little dots like seed pearls, so the metal looks like frost on a window. When I held it to the lamp the shadows ran up the bell like smoke.

Last night I put a record on to test the motor, not looking at the label. It was your voice. Only four bars of it, the waltz you used to hum while you did the washing up, and then the needle slid into a groove that had gone sideways. The sound came out of that horn bent and curling, as if the notes had grown legs and were climbing the wall. I stood there with the oil can in my hand like a fool.

I have not told Pallister. I have written the serial number on the back of my cuff and put the record inside my coat. I will bring it to you on Sunday on the Cliftonville bus, if you will meet me at the pier gates. Bring nothing. I have the horn to finish.

Yours, Tom

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