Black ink ornamental mandala tattoo running down the centre of a woman's upper back, with her hair tied up in a bun.

Ornate mandala tattoo down the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical ornamental design of two stacked mandala-like medallions with curling scrollwork and filigree detail, sits along the centre of the upper back. The design is rendered in fine, dense black linework with small dotted accents, and the background is a plain skin tone with a white tiled wall behind. A white lace shawl is draped over the shoulders, and the image is framed from behind with the hair pinned up.

Back Mandala Ornament Filigree Scrollwork Medallion Paisley

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

The wire is finer than a hair, and Nan says you must not breathe on it while you curl it, because your breath will soften the silver and the scroll will sag like a wet sail. So you hold your breath. Outside the shutters the ferry horn sounds twice, which means the Tuesday boat is early and the whole harbour will be down at the quay wanting its post.

Keep reading

You have been at the bench since before light, pinching tiny beads of solder onto the rings of the first medallion, the one that will sit highest. Nan made the lower one forty years ago, and her hands still know its pattern without looking. She says every mandala on this island is a map of the lanes below: the centre is the church, the petals are the houses, and the scrolls that spill outward are the steps down to the water, where the nets hang like lace to dry.

By noon the piece is finished but for the joins. Nan holds it to the window and turns it slowly, so the light goes through the open filigree and throws a net of small shadows across the whitewashed wall. "There," she says. "Now it can't be lost, because anyone who looks at it will know the way home."

You fasten it to the chain for the girl who is leaving on the boat tonight, and you do not say that you have made the second circle a little wrong on purpose, so that the lane it points to has a gap in it, a door left open for the coming back.