Black and grey lace-patterned bow tattoo on the top of a foot, with looped ribbon ends trailing downwards.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace bow tattoo on the top of a foot

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black bow with a lace pattern fills the frame, showing loops and two trailing ribbon ends. The lace texture is made from open cut-out motifs and fine outlines, with grey shading giving the bow some depth against the skin. The tattoo sits centrally on a pale background with the foot and skin tone visible around it.

Other Bow Lace Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bobbins clack across the kitchen table because your mother has taken in lace again, and the thread has to be wound before the pit whistle goes at six. Your father is still in the tin bath by the range, the water gone the colour of stewed tea. You reach for the black silk he will not let anyone else touch, because it is the only thread in the house that doesn't smell of coal.

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The lace is for a shop in Nottingham that sends a man on a bicycle every second Thursday. Your mother taught you to pin the pattern to the pillow and work the little open rings, the holes left behind when a thorn is pulled from a sleeve. Tonight the order is a bow, one fat loop and two trailing ribbons, and the ribbons must hang the same length or the buyer sends the whole thing back with a note.

Your fingers slip on the third ribbon. You unpick it at the knot and the lace goes soft and wrong in your hands. Your brother comes in from the yard with dust in the creases of his neck and asks who it's for. You tell him a girl in London who has never seen a pit. He laughs, then stops, because you aren't laughing.

You tie the knot tight and lay the bow on yesterday's newspaper to set. By the time the whistle goes it has stiffened, both ribbons level, and you carry it to the window to watch the grey light come through all those small holes, the way the light comes through the gaps in the pit-head doors.