Black ink flash sheet of ten symmetrical ornamental designs with spirals, diamonds, chevrons and dots, drawn on white paper.

Ornamental flash sheet with ten motifs

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

The sheet shows ten separate ornamental motifs arranged in a loose grid, each built from a central diamond, spiral or flower with symmetrical extensions. The linework is solid black with bold, even strokes, and some motifs use filled areas while others use open outlines and dot accents. The designs are drawn in black ink on white paper with no colour.

Geometric Ornament Spiral Diamond Chevron Dot Flower Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Pell had the sketchbook open on the counter of the pawnshop on Scale Lane when Tobias came in with the rain still on his cap. Ten ink motifs filled the pages, each no bigger than a thumbprint: chevrons stacked like gulls, a diamond with a spiral tucked into one corner, a flower that counted its petals in threes. She told him a sailor had drawn them between Lisbon and Recife, and that the margin said they were meant for the stern lanterns of the Corinna, not to be painted on any hull until he was home.

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Tobias had no uncle who went to sea. He had a grandmother who had been a seamstress and had sewn the same bands of spirals onto every christening gown in the parish, and he knew the chevrons from the hem of her wedding sampler. He carried the book to the lamp by the window. The ink had bled where the paper had been damp, and in the lower corner someone had pressed a thumb beside a date that had not yet arrived.

He traced the motifs onto tracing paper all night, one after another, the way his grandmother had taught him to count stitches: diamond, chevron, dot, dot, dot. By dawn he had nine. The tenth, a cascade of dots falling away like a rope of beads, would not come right, and he tried it four times before he understood that it was not meant to be drawn at all. It was only a space the size of a palm, left for whoever carried the book next to put their own mark in.

He pinned the tracing to the shop lintel. The rain stopped, and down in the harbour a ship sounded its horn twice, which was how the Corinna had always said goodbye. Tobias took up the pen and left the last space empty.