Black and grey lace-style filigree tattoo covering the centre of a person's back, with floral motifs and scrolling ornament.

Lace-style filigree back piece

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental tattoo runs down the centre of the back, built from scrolling, paisley-like forms and cross-shaped panels. The fine black linework is filled with stippled dot detail and soft grey shading, which gives the design a delicate lace texture. The piece fills most of the frame against plain skin, with a dark patterned garment visible at the bottom edge.

Back Lace Filigree Scrollwork Flower Paisley Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mercy Coad had been pricking the same pattern for three weeks, and her mother's pins kept rolling off the pillow onto the flagstones of the keeper's kitchen. Outside, the wind off Start Point worked at the shutters. Her husband Joseph had gone up the tower at dusk to trim the wick, and she had told him she would have the cross finished by morning.

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The pattern was a Honiton design, a cross with scrolls spilling from each arm like sea foam, and the old pillow had a hundred bobbins hung from it. She worked the ground stitch with her eyes half closed, counting twists the way her grandmother had taught her, reading the lace through her fingers rather than her eyes. Each time the lamp swept across the window, the room lit silver and the threads turned to wire.

When Joseph came down at midnight his coat was salted white and he said the lamp was burning steady, nothing to fret over. He looked at the pillow for a long time. 'It's a window,' he said. 'Not a cross.' She didn't argue. She cut the last bobbin free and held the finished panel to the glass, and the beam came round and passed through every dot and loop, throwing the whole pattern across the wet sand below.

Ships in the bay that night saw a cross of light laid on the water, and by morning the fishermen were talking about it in the Ferry Inn. Mercy kept the lace. She pinned it above the stair where the beam crossed the landing every minute, and Joseph swore the squalls went around the house after that.