Black and grey skull tattoo with ornate filigree covering the back, with a diamond motif above the skull.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate skull across a back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large skull tattoo covers the whole of the back, with empty eye sockets, a detailed nasal cavity and teeth shown in a grey-shaded, ornamental style. Filigree scrollwork surrounds the face and a jewel-like pendant hangs below the jaw, while a geometric diamond shape sits at the top near the neck. The image is in black and grey and is framed from behind in a bright indoor room.

Back Skull Filigree Diamond Ornament Teeth Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold your peelings still, the pair of you, and mind that knife. Aye, I'll tell it, but only the once, and you'll not cut in with your questions like the last lad did. The lantern on the Lydia Crane's stern was the finest thing afloat, and it was no lamp at all until a Wapping silversmith called Josiah Pell got his hands on it. He worked a skull out of pale metal, scrolls curling round its brow like lace on a widow's collar, a garnet hung from its jaw on a chain as fine as hair.

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Pell would not give it eyes. He said a lamp wants a dark place to throw its light from, and he left the sockets hollow, black as tar on a wet deck. The captain grumbled, but he paid, and the skull went up over the taffrail with a candle inside it.

On the third night out from Falmouth the wind backed hard and the watch lost the stars. The carpenter's boy was in a fever below and nobody could say which way was north. Then the shadow of that skull fell across the galley ladder, long and steady, and pointed. Old Ned at the helm swore it was the lamp's own eyes showing him the way. We put the bow where the shadow lay, and by dawn we raised the Scillies with the sun on our backs.

That's why I never hang a lamp without a hole in it for the dark to sit in. Now pass me that ladle, Tom, and watch the pendant swinging on the hook there. Mind it doesn't catch the light.