Close view of a red ornamental scrollwork tattoo running along the outer rim of an ear, with a captive ring piercing and a white spiral plug in the lobe.

Red scrollwork tattoo along the outer ear

Other · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows a red tattoo of swirling scrolls, curls and small dots tracing the outer rim of an ear. The linework is solid and even, with no shading, and the red ink is the only colour in the design against the pale skin. The ear fills the centre of the frame against blond hair, with a silver captive ring and a white spiral taper visible below.

Other Ear Scrollwork Swirl Dot Filigree Spiral

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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

Right, sit down where the light from the landing can reach you, because this is the story of the lift gate. Harrow Court had nine floors and one lift, and its gate was black iron cut into scrolls, the sort you'd expect to find on a bandstand. Nobody liked it. Then in the summer of 1969 a sign-painter called Eamon Quill came up from the council yard with a tin of red enamel and a fine brush, and he said he would make the building breathe.

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He did not hurry. Each curl took him an afternoon. He started at the tight centre of the spiral and let it run out towards the edge, and every time a curl ended he dabbed a red dot beside it like a full stop. The old men on the benches said he was soft in the head. The children said he was painting the inside of a fox's ear. He only nodded and kept going, the lift clanking up and down behind him with its doors wide open because it had nowhere else to be.

Then the council decided the gate needed scraping for rust, and men came with wire brushes. Eamon had died by then, of a chest that never agreed with paint fumes. But the men stopped at the first red curl and stood there scratching their heads. Nobody could bring themselves to take it off, so the rest of the gate stayed as it was, and the red stayed too.

If you go up to the ninth floor tonight and the lift bell rings, look at the edge of the gate. You can still see the last curl turning out towards the stairwell, as if somebody is still waiting for it to be finished.