Black and grey ornamental back tattoo across the upper back and spine of a woman seated on a sofa, with a botanical tattoo on her thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental back tattoo on a seated woman

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman seated on a grey sofa, photographed from behind, holds a camera and wears a light, close-fitting bodysuit. A large black and grey ornamental design with scrollwork and circular motifs covers her upper back and shoulder, with a lace-like pattern continuing down the spine. A smaller botanical design with leaves sits on the outer thigh, and the warm, soft lighting keeps the focus on the tattoos.

Back Thigh Lace pattern Botanical Leaves Camera

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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

Mrs Pell's bobbins clacked late into the night in the back parlour of the boarding house on Marine Parade, and by October you could no longer tell which pattern sheets were hers and which were yours. The rain came in sideways off the Channel and rattled the sash. Lodgers complained of the draught on the stairs, but the lace kept growing on its pillow, a scrolled width curling out from the centre like the fern heads on the pier railings. You learned to count the pins under your breath and keep your fingers warm between the cross and the twist.

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The commission came by post from a photographer in Hove who wanted a border for a portrait session, something that would look like frost spreading across a window. He enclosed a single tin-type and a note that said only, make it look as if it is growing. So you worked sprays of hart's-tongue and bramble into the edging, leaves turning at their tips, and when Mrs Pell saw the first finished yard she laid her spectacles on the table and said nothing for a full minute, which was how she praised.

The lace was finished on the Friday. You wrapped it in tissue and carried it up the hill against the wind, and the studio smelt of hot lamps and developing fluid. The photographer held the collar to the window and turned it slowly so the light came through the mesh. He said the scrolls looked as though they were breathing. Then he set his camera on its tripod and said he could not pin the lace in place until he had found the one leaf that was wrong.

You had drawn it wrong. Somewhere in the third yard a bramble leaf faced the other way, its vein running back toward the stem. Nobody else had noticed. He laughed, then stopped, and you both stood looking at it while the afternoon light moved across the floor. Mrs Pell never asked about it. Years later you still turn one leaf in every piece you make so that it points the wrong way, and you tell yourself it is for luck.