Black and grey ornamental tattoo on a forearm, partly under a rolled shirt cuff, in a black and white photo of a man's outfit with a striped tie.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental tattoo on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a forearm with a tattoo of flowing ornamental scrollwork, possibly with leaf-like or paisley-style shapes, extending from the wrist up toward the elbow. The linework and shading appear fine and detailed, with grey tones giving the design depth. The forearm is angled diagonally across the frame, with a rolled shirt cuff, cardigan, striped tie and belt visible around it.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, The drawing room at the mill has gone quiet since the Glasgow men left by the back stairs, so I am writing by the window while the light still holds. Mr Hendry has at last let me see the cartoon for the new long shawl, the one the buyers want in claret and bottle green. He ordered me to draw the teardrop again, the one with its head bent over like a question, and I have drawn it eleven times this week without once getting the curl to sit right.

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Last night I took a sheet home and laid it on Mother's kitchen table under the lamp. She looked at it for a long while, then went to the press and brought out the old Kashmir piece Father wore to chapel, folded in tissue paper. Its fringe was worn to threads at the crease. She said the curl had always been there, and that the weaver had left a deliberate flaw in one leaf, because only God makes a thing perfect. I doubted her until I held the cloth to the lamp. The flaw is a hair's breadth of blank thread, and I had missed it through twenty years of looking.

So I have decided to leave mine with a gap too. Hendry will shout. Let him. Tomorrow I will draw the cartoon the way a man signs his name, with the imperfection in plain sight, and if the buyers ask, I will tell them it is an old custom from the far side of the world, which is near enough true.

Burn this letter when you have read it, or keep it in your Bible beside the psalm about the fields. The ink on the curl is still wet, and the small mistake in it is the best thing I have drawn in years. Your loving brother, Andrew.

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