Black lace-pattern bow tattoo centred on the upper back, shown in a blackwork style, with a small line of script to the left.

Lace bow tattoo on the upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large bow is tattooed centred on the upper back, below the nape of the neck. Its loops and tails are solid black with lace-like openwork patterns and fine dotted edging, giving a textile effect. A small script line sits to the left of the bow, and the tattoo is shown in black ink only against smooth skin.

Blackwork Back Bow Lace Script Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock keeper at Hawkesbury never reads the name painted on the Marigold's bow, but he always reads the ribbon. It hangs in the cabin window, a black lace bow your aunt Dora pinned there the winter she gave up her loom. For three weeks you have been working the boat north with her pattern book open on the tiller shelf, and each time the water rises over the gate a page of her handwriting goes soft at the corners.

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The trouble starts at Stoke Lane, where a boy on the towpath asks whether the bow is a present for someone. You tell him it is a pattern, which is half true. Dora taught you the loops the way she taught everything, by letting you get them wrong until your fingers learned the lie of the thread. Cross the pin, keep the tension even, and the openwork holds its shape. Pull too hard and it puckers into a grey knot. Pull too soft and it sags like wet paper.

At Holloway Wharf you find the last loom in the village, rusting under a tarpaulin behind the coal shed. The owner, a widow with flour on her cuffs, says it has not turned since the mill closed. You wind a length of Dora's black thread onto the spindle, and on the third pull the old treadle gives a click like a held breath. The lace runs off the bobbins in one fine dark ribbon. You tie the first finished bow to the mooring ring and watch it lift in the wind off the cut.

By the time the Marigold reaches the tidal river you have stopped reading the pattern book. Your hands know the crossings now. The bow in the window stays where it is, though you no longer need it to remember the way. You cut the last tail from the spool, knot it neatly, and tie up for the night with the lamp still lit.