Black and grey hatched tattoo of a profile face wrapped in a spiralling ribbon on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Profile face wrapped in ribbon on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo on the upper arm shows a profile face wrapped in a ribbon that spirals down the skin and ends in a loose loop. The linework is built from dense hatching and fine shading that gives an engraved, woodcut-like finish. The design is in black and grey and sits centrally on the arm against a soft, out-of-focus background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the block for the Harwich wedding card came back from the printer with the ink bled in all the wrong places, so I have spent three nights recutting the fine hatching, one line at a time, with the lamp pulled close and the cold coming up through the floorboards.

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The commission was for a favour card, one to be pressed into every guest's hand at the church door. Mrs Pellow wanted her late husband's face in profile, and she wanted it wound about with the ribbon from her own wedding, a length of blue silk she had kept folded in tissue for thirty-one years. I asked her to hold the ribbon while I drew. She would not let go of the end of it. 'Cut it where it loops,' she said, 'and leave the loop open, so he can get out.'

I did as she asked. The face came up out of the boxwood the way faces do, the brow first, then the stubborn line of the jaw, and the ribbon ran round it like a stair. At the bottom I left the little loop unfinished, a gap the width of a thumb. When she saw it she laughed for the first time since I had known her and set a shilling on the bench beside the proof.

The wedding is Saturday, and the bride's grandmother has ordered six hundred cards. I have bought fresh ink and a second block, and I am keeping the loop open on every one. Write soon, and tell me the sea has not made a sailor of you yet. Your loving sister, Ada.

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