Black ornate mandala tattoo running down the centre of a woman's upper back, seen from behind.

Ornate mandala down the spine

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman seen from behind wears a white lace bralette and sits on a bed, with her hair up. A dark, ornate mandala with a central flower and scalloped rings runs down the centre of her upper back, with a small dotted line above it and a pointed, tiered motif below. The fine black linework and solid areas show clearly against the skin, and the design is centred on the spine within a plain, softly lit composition.

Geometric Back Mandala Flower Spine Lace pattern Dot

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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

Sit closer, the fire wants feeding and I want you where I can see your face when I tell you about Mairi Dunphy and the lamp she couldn't light.

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Mairi made lace on this island the way the sea makes sand, slowly and without asking anyone's leave. Her bobbins clattered on the doorstep every evening while the boats came in. The old women said she copied everything: the nets, the gorse, the lighthouse wheel seen through rain. But the one pattern she never finished was a flower with rings inside rings, a rose that opened like a clock face, and under it a tiered point like a spire with its top cut off. She had it from a window in the drowned chapel at Sgeir Bheag, where the glass went under before anyone thought to take it.

Every spring she tried again. Pins in the cushion, thread gone grey from the salt. Her husband Calum said the flower was too proud for a woman with no candle, and she told him a flower doesn't need a candle, it needs a patient hand.

When the storm took the boats in the autumn of the great tide, she was the one who climbed the headland with a lamp. The wick would not catch in the wind, so she held her shawl around it, and the lace at her collar threw the light out in a hundred small rings across the rocks. The lost men steered by it. Those who lived swore the shape was on the water that night, dotted with spray above and tiered below.

Is that enough for tonight? Off to bed with you, and mind the step. It still has her bobbins in the cracks.