Black and grey realism style crown tattoo with beaded edges and a small cross on top, placed centre of the upper back.

Ornate crown on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed crown with a small cross on its top sits centrally on the upper back, with the wearer's neck and loose dark hair visible above it. The design uses dark outlines and grey shading to show the beaded rim, arches and scrolled ornament, with soft grey tones giving it depth. The background is a plain skin tone with a light red tint around the tattoo and a dark top at the bottom edge.

Realism Back Crown Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The beck had frozen to the bottom stone, so Ada broke the ice with the back of the spade and went down to the drowned field for the sheep. The flood had gone off in November and left its rubbish in the hedge: a wheel rim, two boots that did not match, a child's chair with no back. Under the wrack of the wall she found the crown. It was pewter gone black, its arches like the ribs of a boat, beads running round the rim, and a little cross standing on top as if someone had meant it to stay upright in water.

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Her brother Joe laughed when she carried it up to the yard. A crown was for a king, he said, and the nearest king lived in a town with a bridge and a bank. Ada said the cows did not check the paperwork. She rubbed the metal with wood ash and a rag all afternoon while the light went yellow and then grey over the fold, and by dark the scrolls showed up like frost on a window, every bead distinct.

The snow came in the night and buried the lane to the gate. In the morning the ewes had got into the turnip clamp and the dog was barking at nothing. Joe was up before her, shoulders white, and he stopped in the byre door with the lantern in his hand. Ada heard him breathe out. He did not say anything about kings.

She hung the crown on the nail above the feed bin, where the lantern light could reach it, and counted the ewes under it every morning until the thaw.