Black ink ornamental tattoo with dotted chains, crescents and teardrops across the inner wrist and forearm, shown from two angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental lace wrist tattoo with dotted chains

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink ornamental design with a central filigree motif, dotted chains and small teardrop shapes spreads across the inner wrist and lower forearm. The linework is fine and the dotted sections are built up with stippling, while solid black fills add contrast in the central motif. The photographs are in black and grey only, shown from two angles against a grey knit sleeve and dark trousers.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Lace Ornament Filigree Crescent moon Teardrop Dotted chain Wrist Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pricking was already full of holes when Nell came down to the kitchen, its card gone soft at the corners from three generations of thumbs. Her aunt had pierced every dot with a pin, so that the design showed when held to the lamp like frost on a windowpane: a crescent moon either side, a chain of dots looping down in swags, a central flower with its petals hooked back on themselves, and at the foot of it all, a row of drops that might have been water or might have been tears.

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"Mrs Harcourt wants it turned," her aunt said, not looking up from the pillow. "The bride's sleeve is to go from the shoulder down, not up from the cuff, and the moons have to face the other way or the whole thing hangs crooked." Nell took the card and held it against the window. The moons did look wrong facing out. She counted the dots along the top edge twice, once in her head and once with her finger, the way she had been taught before she was old enough to be trusted with a pin, and got a different number each time.

By midnight she had the card pricked again, the holes pushed through with the same sharp pin, and the bobbins were clicking in a rhythm she could feel in her shoulders. Forty pairs hung off the pillow, each with its small lead weight, and when she lifted the lace away from the pins to check it, the drops swung together like a row of tiny bells that had agreed on something.

Her aunt came in at one, took the first finished length between two fingers and turned it to the lamp. She said nothing for a long time. Then she pinned the end of it to the frame and said, "Now it closes," and went back to bed, and Nell sat with the cold tea and watched the moons face each other across the empty space in the middle.