Black and grey tattoo of a fringed lampshade above a fishnet-stockinged leg in a high-heeled shoe, on the calf.

Lamp with fishnet leg on calf

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a fringed lampshade above a leg wearing a fishnet stocking and a black high-heeled shoe. The linework is clean and the shading uses grey tones to give the shade and leg volume. The design fills the frame vertically on the lower leg, with a plain skin background.

Calf Leg High heel Shoe

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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 down, Tomasz, and leave that flour alone until I've finished, because the oven won't be ready for another hour and neither will you. You want to know why the lamp is in the window? It came off the back of Mrs Wenlock's delivery van in the winter of 1981, wrapped in a blanket that smelt of diesel and cloves, and she said it belonged to her husband's brother, who had gone to sea and never come back for his things.

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The shade was pleated silk the colour of a clay pot, with a fringe that swung when the door opened. But it was the leg that stopped the street. Somebody had stretched black fishnet over a pale wooden limb, fixed a patent heel to the end of it, and set it upright on the counter like a woman waiting for a bus that would never come. Nobody bought bread that week. They came to stand at the glass and argue about whether it was vulgar or merely honest.

I did not sell it. My father would have had a fit. We kept it on the shelf above the proving drawer, where the warmth crept into the mesh, and every morning I lit it before I lit the ovens, so that anyone passing in the dark would see a golden glow and think, someone is already at work in there.

Mrs Wenlock died in the spring and the brother never came. The lamp is still here, and the fishnet has a ladder in it now that I've never mended, because a ladder is only the place where the light gets out. Now go and scale the dough, and mind the heel. It's sharper than it looks.