Black and grey traditional tattoo of a woman in profile with an updo and flower, with a rose below, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Profile portrait and rose on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in side profile wearing an updated hairstyle with a flower tucked into it, drawn in bold black outlines with fine hatched detail in the hair. Below her, a rose with layered petals and leaves is shaded in black and grey, and the two designs sit close together on the forearm. The plain pale wall behind the arm keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Hollis wanted the brooch finished by Friday, and the lady in it had no name yet, only a wax impression and a sitter who had died before paying. I sat at the bench with the loupe strapped to my forehead and cut the first curl of her hair into the shell, each whorl no wider than a barleycorn, while the gas lamp hissed over my shoulder.

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The flower was the trouble. Hollis wanted a bloom tucked behind her ear, the sort the girls at the Palais pinned on when they had a bob to show off, but every time I cut the petals they came out like fish scales. On the Thursday, Edie from the packing room climbed the stairs with a cup of stewed tea and a cutting from her aunt's yard, a red rose on a stem gone soft at the edges. She set it on the bench beside the shell and went back down without a word.

I drew the rose petal by petal, then turned the shell under the lamp until the flower sat in the lady's hair as though it had grown there. Hollis came up at six, held the brooch to the window and said nothing for so long I thought I had spoiled it. Then he laughed, short and surprised, and said the sitter's husband would pay double for a flower that looked picked that morning.

I cut the second rose that night, small and low on the edge, and signed it with the tiniest mark I could manage. Edie still keeps the cutting in a jam jar on her windowsill, and I have never told Hollis that the flower in the lady's hair was hers before it was ever mine.

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