Upper arm and shoulder tattoo of black lace ornament with dangling chains, an anchor and a feather, with soft pink petals at the top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace, anchor and feather upper arm tattoo

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The design covers the shoulder and upper arm with black ornamental lace, hanging chains with beads, a small anchor and a dark feather at the lower end. Pink flower petals and a pale purple feather sit at the top of the piece, adding colour to the otherwise black linework. The lines are bold and the black areas are solid, and the tattoo fills the frame against a dark top.

Upper arm Shoulder Lace Anchor Feather Chain Bead Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down on that bench, love, and mind the draught, because this platform catches every wind that comes off the estuary. I'll tell you about Ada Fenwick, who waited here every Thursday for the last train out to Cawsey Pier. She was a lacemaker's daughter, and her fingers could spin a net of thread fine enough to hold a whole winter's gossip.

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Her man, Tom Greave, signed on as deckhand aboard the coaster Morwenna, so she worked a small anchor into the hem of every collar she made, that he might know her handiwork if one ever came back to port. She sewed chains of little jet beads along the edges so they chimed when she walked, and she tucked a dark gull feather into her hat, plucked from a bird that had flown headlong into the signal lamp. Her roses climbed the station wall, and their pink petals blew across the sleepers all spring.

Every Thursday she sent a length of lace down the line in the guard's van, and every Thursday the guard brought nothing back. Then one autumn evening a scrap of lace came up on the milk train, folded round a jay's feather the colour of a bruised plum. Stitched in the middle was a single word, HOME, and the anchor beside it had been unpicked and sewn again, crooked and upside down, the way a man does when he has never held a needle in his life.

Hobbs, the stationmaster, swore she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the luggage trolley. Ada was on that platform the next Thursday, and the Thursday after, and she never did learn whether Tom rowed in or simply missed the boat. Mind your step on the edge there. The lamp is changing, and the lace always catches the last of the light.