Mixed-colour tattoo of a black outlined heart filled with scroll ornaments and an orange-gold ribbon, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart and ribbon on a shoulder blade

Back · Mixed · Photo

A heart outline filled with black filigree scrolls sits on the upper back, with a gold-orange ribbon looping through its upper right side. The black outlines are bold and even, while the scrolls inside the heart are finer and more intricate. The ribbon is shaded in orange and yellow tones, and the composition is centred on the shoulder blade with the rest of the skin softly out of focus.

Back Heart Ribbon Scroll Filigree

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every night the ironmaker on Fenner Lane came out at the hour the lamps were lit and walked the length of the railings with a rag and a tin of oil. He was looking for any scroll that had gone soft with rust. Nobody in the lane knew why he did it, only that his gates were the finest in the city and never rusted.

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His daughter Mabel asked him once what the heart was for. It was the shape he kept coming back to, he said, a heart cut through with curls like the tendrils of a bine, each one a small knot he had to get right before the metal would bend. She had watched him weld the thin scrolls inside the frame on the coldest night of the year, sparks falling into the gutter like orange seed.

The winter the river froze, a ribbon appeared on the gate of number nine, tied to the iron with a knot nobody on the lane could undo. It was gold silk, faded to the colour of weak tea. Mabel worked the knot loose with her fingernails and found a note folded inside: keep one light burning for the boats. She carried it to her father, who read it twice, then took his file from the bench, cut a loop of iron the width of the silk, and welded it through the heart so it could never slip.

After that the lamps on Fenner Lane were never allowed to go out, and the gate at number nine still hangs straight. Walk past it after dark and you will see the ribbon, gold in the lamplight, and you may be sure someone has been looking after it.