Black ink ornamental tattoo of paisley scrolls and a central mandala-style motif spreading across the back of a person's neck and upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental paisley tattoo on neck and back

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the back of the neck and upper back, with a central symmetrical motif of petals, leaves and a pointed drop shape flanked by curling paisley scrolls. The linework is fine and dense, with stippled and hatched shading creating a lace-like texture within the panels. It is rendered entirely in black ink against bare skin, and the design is composed to follow the curve of the neck and shoulder blades.

Neck Back Paisley Mandala Floral Leaves Ornament Scroll Lace pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Wynne Hollin kept the lace pattern book in the chapel at Harrowcombe, where the damp could not get at it, though the damp got at everything else. The keep had lost its north tower the winter the bell cracked, and the great hall had become a roost for jackdaws. Still, every spring she unwrapped the book from its oilcloth and turned the pages with a wetted thumb: leaves in threes, seed drops with pointed tails, scrolls that coiled back on themselves like bracken before it opens.

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The lord's cousin came up from the valley in April wanting a pattern for her wedding, and Wynne showed her the page with the great centre motif, a split bud with petals folded like a sail. 'That one takes a year,' Wynne said. 'Every hole in it is a decision.' The cousin said she had a year. Wynne said nobody had a year, and then she opened the drawer under the altar and took out the needle, thin as a hair, that her mother had used to work the same design on a collar for the old lord.

They sat by the broken window and worked through the afternoon. Rain came in sideways and dried on the flags. Wynne pricked each dot with the needle and the cousin followed with thread, and by the time the valley bell rang for dusk they had finished one scroll, the curl going round and round toward the centre.

The cousin asked why the pattern always began in the middle and spread outward. Wynne closed the book. 'Because that is where you start when you mean to keep hold of something,' she said, and went to light the lamp before the wind found the candle.