Black and grey line drawing of a Celtic knotwork design shaped like an S, with interlaced bands and pointed tips at each end, drawn as a tattoo stencil.

Interlaced knotwork S-shaped design

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a black line drawing of a Celtic-style interlace design, arranged in a vertical S-shaped form with a pointed tip at the top and another at the bottom. Bands of looping, over-and-under woven lines form several knot cells connected at diamond-shaped crossings. The drawing uses clean uniform outlines on a plain light grey background, with small grey shading marks along some crossings.

Traditional Celtic knot Knotwork Interlace Design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the gulls have been at the drying lines again, so mind I'm writing this on the back of the tide tables. Mrs Garside at the boarding house took the spare room for the summer season, the one over the coal store, and she has asked me to plait her a bell rope for the front door since the old one rotted through in March. I told her I would make it in the pattern Father used to cut into the lintel of the chandler's shop, the one with the two hooked tips like a pair of wrasse fins. I have been at it three nights now.

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The trouble is the crossings. Every time I lay the bands over and under I come round to the same place with one strand left over, and I cannot see where it goes. Father never wrote any of it down. He used to say a true knot has no loose end, you only have to follow the band far enough and it will bring you back to where you began. I thought he was talking about rope.

Last night I stopped trying to count the crossings and simply followed the bight with my thumb, slowly, the way you would follow a seam in a dark room. It curled up through the middle, folded over itself twice, and came out at the top hook, exactly where I had started. The whole thing sat flat on the table like a fish laid out to dry.

I am sending you a sketch of it, though I know you will say it looks like a bad copy of the chandler's lintel. Mrs Garside says she will hang it by the door on Saturday. Come home when your ship is paid off, and I will show you where the strand goes.