Black and grey pencil drawing of a heart-shaped keyhole lock framed by roses and lace ornament, a flash design for a tattoo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lock, roses and lace ornament design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical drawing shows a heart-shaped padlock with a keyhole at its centre, flanked by two roses on each side and a crown-like motif at the top. Below the lock, a lace-like filigree panel hangs with dangling beaded chains. The linework is fine and detailed with stippled and hatched shading, rendered in pencil or ink on pale paper.

Botanical Dotwork Lock Keyhole Heart Rose Lace Chain Crown

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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

My dear Ada, the box you asked me to mend came back to the shop on Tuesday with its hinge sprung and a tin heart rattling inside it, which I had not expected. The lock is a Chubb-pattern thing with a keyhole cut in the shape of a rose's stem, and whoever filed it knew their business. I have spent three evenings with a jeweller's glass and a pick, teasing out the lace-pattern on the escutcheon plate, and I will confess I have grown fond of the thing. The roses that frame it are not roses at all, I think, but the faces of two sisters who pawned their mother's silver to buy it.

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Mr Pardoe came in this morning asking whether we could make a key for a lock that has no keyhole. I told him that was not a lock but a promise, and he laughed as though I had made a joke. He left a shilling and a folded note with the name of a street I do not know, which I have tucked under the bench lamp so the damp cannot get at it. I shall not go there. I have a feeling the note is meant for someone who already knows the way.

So here is my plan. Send the box back by the Thursday post and I will return it with the hinge true and the chains re-hung, the little beads dangling as they should. You may keep the key yourself. I have filed a second one from the wax impression, and it fits, Ada, which frightens me more than the note does. Burn this letter when you have read it, as you always tell me to burn mine.

Yours in brass and oil, Tom