Black ink tattoo of an ornate scrolled cross with the word Hope in script across its centre, shown on skin.

Scrolled cross with Hope script

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical cross built from looping, curling scrolls and a lattice of crossing lines in black ink. The word Hope is written in a flowing script over the central crossing, sitting on top of the vertical stem. The linework is a consistent, moderate weight in black and grey tones, with the design centred on a plain, lightly lit area of skin.

Lettering Cross Scroll Swirl Hope Script Lettering Lattice

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bellows had been wheezing since first light, and Oswin Teal still had not found the right curl for the top arm. Mrs Pargeter stood in the forge doorway with her gloves in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other, a cross drawn in pencil, each arm rolled over at its end like the head of a young fern.

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'Not too heavy,' she said. 'He was never one for weight.' Oswin drew the bar from the fire and worked it thin, folding the scrolls back on themselves until they looped into one another. He laid the lattice across the middle, bars crossing and crossing again, so that the forge light would fall through as a scatter of small diamonds on the flagstones. His apprentice, Ned, who talked too much, asked what the word was to be, the one she wanted across the crossing.

'Hope,' said Mrs Pargeter. 'And mind you spell it properly, the vicar reads everything.' Oswin had never forged a letter before. He bent the strokes slowly, the H leaning like a man against a gale, the p dropping its tail through the stem. Twice the iron split under the hammer and twice he cut it out and began again, while frost came down on the yard and the coals sank to red.

In March the gate went up on the churchyard wall. Rain ran off the curls and gathered in the hollows of the lattice, and where the word crossed the stem the drops hung like beads on a wire. Mrs Pargeter came every Sunday with her gloves on. She never once looked at the cross. She read the word, and went home.