Black and grey lettering flash design reading From dust you were made unto dust you shall return, with a stippled skull beside the words.

Lettering flash with skull and dust quote

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey lettering design arranged across the sheet, with the words From dust, you were made, unto dust and you shall return set in decorative blackletter, script and block capitals. A stippled skull sits on the left, shaded with dotwork and a few solid areas of black. The letters are filled with dotted highlights and surrounded by flourishes and arrow-like marks on a plain white background.

Lettering Dotwork Lettering Skull Quote Script Banner

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have finished the board for Mrs Hesketh at the chapel, and I am writing this before my hands stop shaking, which they have not done since Tuesday. You will laugh, but the trouble was the skull. She wanted a skull set in the middle of the words, no bigger than a walnut, and every time I laid the chalk down it came out looking like a man grinning at a joke he had heard before.

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I did the capitals first, the way Father taught us, DUST blocked out in solid black with the shadow thrown to the lower right, then the flourishes on the Y and the S. The old blackletter was the hard part. You have to keep the spurs even or the whole word leans like a drunk outside the Mechanics' Institute. I put white dots down the stems for the light, nineteen on the first DUST, and I counted them twice because I could not bear the number changing.

On the Thursday she came in to check. She stood at the bench a long time, then asked if she might do the stippling on the skull herself. Her hand was steady as a schoolmistress's. She said her husband had been a glazier and had always told her dust was only glass that had given up. I did not know what to say, so I passed her the finest brush and kept the rest of the grain for myself.

The arrows at the bottom she wanted pointing left, back the way they came. I painted them that way without asking why. Tell Mam the board goes up on Saturday, and I have saved the best of the black for the RETURN. Your brother, Tom.