Black lace and pink flower tattoo with a dangling feather and chain details across a shoulder and upper arm.

Lace, flower and feather upper arm tattoo

Blackwork · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A pink flower with petals sits at the top of the shoulder, with a purple feather and soft pink shading beside it. Black lace motifs run down the upper arm, with fine dangling chains, a small anchor charm and a hanging feather below. The bold black lace contrasts with the softer pink and purple colour, photographed against a dark background.

Blackwork Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Lace Flower Feather Chain Anchor Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lace came across the Vennel Bridge at twenty past four, in a biscuit tin with a Dutch windmill printed on the lid. I had my hand on the latch before the driver finished saying it was only lace, madam, only lace for a wedding in Ostend. Under tissue gone the colour of weak tea lay yards of black bobbin work, every fern frond and scroll knotted by hand, and at the top a pink silk flower the size of my palm, with a purple feather tucked beside it as if the wind had caught it in the thread.

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Declaring it was my job. Handmade lace went through duty-free under the old treaty provided it measured under two metres, and this was neither, so I unrolled it across the steel counter with my pen between my teeth. A chain of tiny brass beads hung from the lowest scroll, and at its end sat a little anchor, its flukes worn smooth by someone's thumb. I asked the driver whose anchor it was. He shrugged. "Her husband's. He went out from Sealand Quay in March and never came in. She makes one piece a year for whoever is crossing, and it goes where she can't."

The form asked for a value. I wrote the word personal in the box for goods of sentimental nature, which nobody reads, and I stamped it twice because my hand had started shaking. The feather at the bottom of the chain swung in the draught from the open door, slow as a metronome, catching the strip light.

I rolled the lace back into its tissue myself, careful of the beads, and handed the tin across the counter. "Ostend is that way," I said, pointing with the stamp, and the driver nodded and went out into the rain, the small brass anchor knocking softly against the tin with every step he took.