Black ink lotus mandala with intricate fine line patterning and three dots above it, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Ornate lotus mandala on a wrist

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed lotus flower built from layered petals, each filled with fine scrollwork, dots and small leaf motifs, sits in the centre of the frame. Three small dots sit above the flower. The linework is fine and even, with some areas shaded in lighter grey, and the tattoo is set against a plain, pale forearm with a dark sleeve and pavement in the background.

Botanical Fine line Dotwork Forearm Lotus Mandala Flower Dot Ornament Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Mrs Pell kept her pricking card in a tin with a broken lid, and she would not let the apprentice touch it until the girl could count her bobbins in the dark. Nell was twelve and sure of her fingers. She learned the ground stitch in a month and the sprig in two, but when she saw the lotus drawn on the back of the card, petal inside petal, she asked for it straight off.

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"That one's for a bride who's leaving," Mrs Pell said. "A lotus opens on the water and shuts in the dark. You make it, you have to finish the flower, or it takes the last thread off you." Nell laughed and carried the card home to the cottage by the mill race. She pricked the outline, then the scrolls, then the leaves no bigger than barley grains. Each night she worked until the lamp smoked. Her mother said the lace was thin as breath and she should eat something.

When the flower was done, three petals were still bare at the crown and there was no thread left on the pillow. She took three pins from the cushion and set them in the card in a row above the bloom, like a seed or a full stop. In the morning Mrs Pell looked at it a long while and said nothing. She folded the lace into a box and sent it to the widow at Honiton who had ordered a veil.

Nell kept the card. Years later, when she knew the price of thread, she still pricked a row of three holes above every lotus she made, and she never once let the flower close.