Black ornamental mandala tattoo spanning the upper back of a woman with long dark hair draped over one shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate mandala tattoo across upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a large symmetrical black ornamental design across her upper back. The design has a central medallion with hanging drops, scrolls, fine lattice lines and scattered dots, framed by a scalloped outer border. The ink is solid black on a plain background of soft curtains.

Back Shoulder Mandala Ornament Lace pattern Medallion Teardrop Dot Scrollwork

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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

The pricking card is still warm from the lamp when your aunt hands it over, and you see at once that the dots are not random. Mrs Penhallow in Porthgwidden has pinned her lace pattern for forty years on the same cork board above the stove, and she has never let anyone else touch the pins. Now her hands shake too much to hold them, so the work passes to you, someone who has only ever wound bobbins for other people's collars.

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The pattern is called the Lantern. It starts at a small ring in the middle, a medallion like a ship's porthole, and drops of thread hang from it the way the rigging of the fleet hung from the quay posts when the wind came off the bay. Your aunt taps the scalloped border with a fingernail. "Every pinhole is a boat that came home," she says. "Count them wrong and a man stays out on the water."

You work through the autumn with the bobbins clicking like a clock, following her chalk marks while the fishing boats slide in and out past the window. The lattice lines are the hardest, a tangle of threads that must cross without snagging. Twice you tear the ground and twice she makes you start again, saying nothing, only pointing at the pins with her crooked finger.

In November the last piece comes off the pillow, pale and stiff with starch. Your aunt holds it up to the window where the harbour light is coming through. She counts the teardrops with her eyes closed, then nods. "Now you know every dot," she says, and goes down to the quay to see who has not come in yet.