Black blackwork tattoo of lace-like scrollwork, a lotus flower and hanging chains with drops, across the upper thigh of a person wearing a dark wrap.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace and lotus tattoo on the thigh

Blackwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper thigh with a large ornamental design of lace-like scrollwork, a central lotus flower and fine chains ending in teardrop shapes. The linework is bold and solid with fine dotted and stippled detail inside the lace panels, and the design is entirely in black ink. The composition wraps around the leg from the hip down, with the chains hanging towards the knee against a plain grey background.

Blackwork Botanical Thigh Lace Lotus Flower Scrollwork Chain Teardrop Ornament Paisley

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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

You learn the pattern before you learn its name. Your grandmother's pillow sits on her knees by the window of the house on Gull Lane, where the harbour smells of tar and diesel, and she pins the pricked card with brass pins while the bobbins clatter like dice. You are nine and your fingers are too thick for the thread, so she takes your wrist and shows you how to cross the pairs, twist them, and let them fall.

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The lace goes to the Sunday market at the top of the slipway, and the chains of little jet drops she sews along the hem are what the tourists stop for. Your grandfather says the drops are there to weight the lace so the wind can't lift it. She says they're for the sea, so it will think twice before taking anything back. He laughs. She doesn't.

The winter the Mary Lowe went down off the Hook, your grandmother finished a panel with a lotus at its heart, the petals worked so tight you couldn't see where one thread ended and the next began. She pinned it above the stove and would not sell it. Nine men were not on the quay that spring, and the market took its usual pitch without them.

Now you sit at her window with the pillow on your knees. The card is pricked, the pins are in, and the first pair of bobbins goes over and under the way she showed you, while the boats come in on the tide below.