Neo-traditional tattoo on a thigh of two facing profiles inside an ornate oval frame with pearl chains, a red gem and red splatter.

Profile couple in ornate cameo frame on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

Two facing profiles, one with dark hair and one with a darker head covering, are set inside an ornate oval cameo frame topped with a red gem and draped pearl chains. The figures and frame are rendered in bold black and grey linework and shading, with the background filled by red wash and splatter. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the frame filling most of the image.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the Maria has been tied up below Iffley lock since Tuesday, and I have sat with the cameo in my lap every evening since. The frame was your grandmother's. Its pearls were restrung in Oxford by a man who wanted to know what the red was, and I told him it was river paint, which is nearly true.

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Your grandfather Lewis and Constance Pell ran off on this water in 1889 with one trunk and no banns. Her brother caught them at Abingdon and took a mooring pin to Lewis's shoulder. Constance pressed her glove to the wound, and that is the splash you see across both faces. The copyist who made the family portrait in 1910 called it a flourish and kept it, because the family would not pay for a clean one.

Yesterday a boy from the lock came asking about the pearls for his sister's wedding. I told him to go and ask his own mother. I did not tell him that the two in the glass never once turned their faces from each other, not even when the flood came up over the towpath and they could have saved the trunk.

Come home before the frost. Bring the good rope and leave the brother's letters unopened. The cameo will be on the mantel where the lamp catches the gem, and I will keep the kettle on for you, the way Constance did.

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