Black linework tattoo of a matryoshka doll with a tulip, in a traditional style, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matryoshka doll with tulip tattoo

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A matryoshka doll with a painted-style face, headscarf and dotted folk pattern fills most of the frame, with a tulip drawn in its lower body. The lines are bold and solid black, with dotted and filled areas for shading and no colour. The tattoo is centred on the skin against a pale fabric background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan kept her dolls in a biscuit tin under the spare bed, and on the morning of my cousin's wedding she made me carry the whole stack down to the hotel car park in a bread bag. There were seven of them, each one smaller than the last, all wearing the same black-lined headscarf and the same stern little painted mouth. She said they had to be counted before anyone spoke to a bride.

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I counted them on the kerb while the florist shouted about the buttonholes. Six, seven, and the smallest rattled because she had come loose from her sister. Nan took the tiny one from me and turned her over. Under the folk pattern at the hem, drawn in thick solid lines with no colour at all, was a tulip, its petals stacked like a closed fist. 'My mother drew that with the point of a bread knife on the table,' she said. 'Before the train. Before anything.'

Nobody in the marquee knew what we were doing. Dilys came out in her dress, saw the dolls lined up on the low wall like a family photograph, and laughed until her mascara ran. Then she asked for the tulip. I gave her the small doll, and she held it up to the light coming through the tent flap, turning it slowly so the lines caught the sun.

That evening Nan packed them back in order, largest to smallest, and handed the whole nest to Dilys for the drive to her new flat. 'Keep them shut,' she said. 'You only open them when you need to see what's inside.' Dilys tucked the biggest one under her arm and went out to the car, and I stood in the car park holding the empty bread bag, the only thing left that nobody wanted to keep.

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