Black ink line drawing of an ornate lotus flower with dotted petals and hanging drop ornaments, a mandala-inspired flash design on a white background.

Ornamental lotus with dotted drop chains

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical lotus flower drawn in black ink on a plain white background, with layered petals and a central bud. The petals are filled with dot patterns, scrollwork and fine decorative lines, and a row of hanging diamond-shaped drops with dotted chains sits beneath the bloom. The design is entirely black linework with no shading or colour, centred in the frame.

Botanical Dotwork Lotus Flower Mandala Dot Drop Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp-maker had one night to finish the lotus before the fair pulled out of Harrow Moss, and he worked it by the stove with his sleeves pushed up, the dotting awl tapping the pearwood like a clock that had lost its nerve. Fourteen petals, each one notched with rings of dots, and a bud at the centre that he kept turning in his fingers because it looked too plain.

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The widow who ran the ring toss had ordered it. Mrs Ada Penhale wanted drops under the bloom, the sort of chain a bride wears across her forehead, so he cut a row of diamonds and strung them on dotted links, nine in all, the middle one longest. She paid him in half-crowns and a jar of quince jam and told him that a lamp should hang as if it meant to stay.

When he finished, the fairground was dark and the wind came off the fen. He lit the wick and the petals threw their little holes of light across the caravan wall. Counting the drops, he found ten. He had cut nine. The tenth hung at the end of the chain, small and black, turning slowly as if someone had threaded it on while he slept.

He did not take it off. In the morning the fair rolled out along the B road and the lamp swung from its hook above Ada's stall, and the children who played ring toss beneath it swore the drops rang when no one touched them. Ada kept the lamp. She said the tenth drop was the one that paid for the rest, and she never once asked him where it came from.