Fine line and dotwork lace-style tattoo with a lotus and red-tipped feather pendants on the inner forearm, shown against a black background.

Lace and feather chain on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm bears an ornamental tattoo of lace-like scrollwork and leaf motifs, with hanging chains of dots and small beads. A lotus sits at the centre, and two feathers hang from the lower chain, one shaded in red and grey. The fine linework and stippled dotwork are rendered in black and grey, set against a plain black background with a hand resting on the upper arm.

Fine line Dotwork Botanical Forearm Lace Mandala Lotus Feather Chain Bead Ornament Scrollwork

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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

The beads come out of the tobacco tin first, before anybody has decided what they are for. Your grandmother tips them onto the galley table of the Patience while the lock gates groan behind you, and she sorts them into saucers by size: black jet, seed pearl, and a few chipped glass drops the colour of weak tea.

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Lace takes the rest of the winter. She pins a paper pattern to the table and you hold the bobbins while the barge rocks at its mooring below Thrupp, the lamp swinging, the cut black and still as tar. Her hands know the scrolls without looking. Leaves first, then the lotus she says will keep the damp out of the bread bin, which makes no sense, and you do not ask.

The feathers are the problem. A jay's wing came off a dead bird on the towpath in March, and she will not let you use it until you have sat with it for three days. You sit. On the third morning the wing has dried stiff, and the grey bar across it looks like smoke. She cuts it with the good scissors and says nothing about the bird.

When the chain is finished she fastens the tiny clasp with her teeth, the way she fastened everything, and tells you to keep the beads tight and the water will bring you home. Out on the cut a moorhen runs for the reeds. The lightest weight tugs at the end of the chain, like a feather that has decided to stay.