Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a matryoshka doll with paisley, flower and geometric patterns across a shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matryoshka doll shoulder and arm tattoo

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A nesting doll with a painted-style face sits at the centre of the upper arm, framed by a large flower, leaves and paisley scrolls that extend over the shoulder. The design is built from fine stippled dotwork shading and clean outlines, with a faint geometric triangle pattern filling the background. The tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink, and the composition wraps around the curve of the shoulder.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mrs Ferriby,

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The room you had in June is made up again, and I have put the bedside lamp back where you liked it, though I still cannot say why you wanted it turned toward the wall. The man from the bus company came about the ledger on Tuesday and asked whether we had lost property this summer. I told him we had only the doll.

You will remember her, the painted one with the pursed red mouth, who sat on the windowsill of number four and watched the front for three weeks. When you left in such a hurry you did not take her, and I have been opening her for nearly a month now. Inside the first is another, and inside that another, seven in all, each one a little more careful than the last, until the smallest is no bigger than a barley grain and I need my spectacles to find her.

Last night the tide came so far up the steps that the pavement shone like slate, and I stood at the scullery sink counting the seven of them in a row on the drainer. The lace of their collars, the flowers picked out in tiny dots, the leaves that seem to lift off the wood: I thought of the trawlermen's wives who used to stitch the same patterns onto their shawls while the boats were out. Eight women in one family, one inside the other, and every one of them waiting for the next to come home.

I have decided to post her to you at the address on your card. I hope it is still current. Do not feel you owe me the postage.

Yours in haste, Vera

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