Black ink drawing of an ornamental treble clef with a Celtic knot, scrolls and leaf details, shown on cream paper as a tattoo design.

Ornamental treble clef with Celtic knot

Black and grey · Flash

A black linework drawing of a treble clef, decorated with a woven Celtic knot near its centre, curling scrolls and leaf-shaped flourishes. The lines are smooth and even in weight, with no shading, and the design is rendered in solid black on a cream background. The clef fills the frame diagonally, with a black card edge visible in the top left corner.

Treble clef Music Celtic knot Scroll Leaves Filigree

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Ailbe had been told the knot must never be broken, so he began the margin of the psalter at its heart and let the thread wander outward until it found its own tail again. Abbot Conn stood over his shoulder at Lauds each morning and counted the crossings with a wet finger, muttering that a scribe who could not count would never be trusted with a chant. The vellum came from a calf born the spring the river flooded the lower field, and it still smelled faintly of that river when the ink went on.

Keep reading

Ailbe did not write the chant. He drew the clef first, a tall stroke with a bowl at the top like a bell, and only then let the knot climb up its neck and the leaves unfurl along it. Hours passed in the scriptorium without anyone speaking. Somewhere down the valley a boy was learning the same tune on a wooden whistle, sounding it wrong, and Ailbe could hear him in the over-and-under pattern of the knot.

On the last night of the copying, the candle guttered and he found he could not make the lower curl close. Every line he laid down ran past the mark where it should have met the beginning. He sat with the pen lifted until the bell for matins, then tilted the page so the light fell across it, and saw that the scroll at the foot was not meant to close at all. It was meant to turn back and lean against the stem, the way the boy leaned against the wall to play.

He left it open. In the morning Abbot Conn ran a thumb along the margin, found no seam to complain about, and said nothing, which was the closest the old man ever came to praise.