Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo of lace, a bow and acanthus scrolls wrapping the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace, bow and acanthus scrolls on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo covers the forearm, showing a lace-like pattern with a bow at the top, a lattice grid behind it, and acanthus-style leaves curling down the arm. The linework is bold and the shading is soft and grey, giving the lace depth against the skin. The design fills the frame diagonally against a plain white background.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Lace Bow Lattice Acanthus Leaves Scroll

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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

Sit yourself down on that crate, and mind the nail, it has had a grievance with everyone since the war. You want the lace story? Everybody wants the lace story once the big top is gone and the elephants have been sold on to a farm past Lincoln.

Keep reading

It starts in Nottingham, in 1911, with the Leavers machines clattering through the night shift and a girl called Nell Cordery threading bobbins for half a shilling a week. Harrow and Vane's Travelling Marvels had pitched on the Forest that summer, and their wardrobe mistress, a sharp little woman called Peg Sallow, came knocking at the mill gate. She wanted net for the high wire, something the aerialist could see through without the wire itself showing. Nell said she could weave her a grid so fine a sparrow would have to think twice.

So Nell wove the lattice on the night shift, every square tight as a drum skin. Then, on her half-days, she sketched the acanthus scrolls off the carved pew ends in St Mary's and worked the leaves into the border by lamplight. The bow at the top she tied from ash-grey thread, because Peg swore the ringmaster's daughter would never be seen in anything so frivolous as a ribbon.

The circus folded that winter. The big top rotted in a field near Beeston, and Peg came back to the mill with the net rolled under her arm, asking Nell to unpick the bow so she could sell the thread. Nell wouldn't. She said a lattice is only ever there to hold something up, and she folded the net into a drawer and left it there until the tent was gone and the net was the only thing still standing.

So when you see a lace like that, don't look at the flowers first. Look at the grid underneath. Somebody counted every square, and that's the bit that holds.