Maroon scrolling leaf and flourish border design repeated across a horizontal strip on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scrolling leaf border design

Colour · Flash

A horizontal ornamental border made of three repeated units, each with symmetrical scrolls, curled tendrils and pointed leaf shapes. The design is drawn with solid, even maroon lines and filled shapes, with no shading. It sits centred on a plain white background with generous margins on all sides.

Scrollwork Leaf Border Ornament Flourish Tendril

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maureen, I have finally found the tin you lent me in 1987, the one with the pressed-leaf wallpaper pattern you swore was from a Victorian dining room in Ludlow. I am sending you the actual sheet, folded in quarters, because you will not believe me otherwise. Three repeats of the border, each one curling back on itself like a fern deciding whether to unroll. I traced it with a biro while the kettle boiled, and my hand kept wanting to finish the scrolls that were already finished.

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The reason I went looking is the reunion. Gordon Pryce rang on Tuesday to say the old art room at Hallam Road is being knocked down in March, and the caretaker has offered us the leftover tiles from the wall behind the kiln. Gordon wants a plaque. I said a plaque would be ridiculous, and then I said I would make a stencil, because nobody remembers the border, only the kiln, and I think that is unfair to the border.

So I cut the stencil from an old acetate sheet on the kitchen table, the same way Mr Okafor taught us, leaving the little leaf tips as bridges so the middle of each shape does not drop out. It took four evenings. The leaves came out left-handed, which pleased me, since you always said I drew everything backwards. Come on the twelfth if you can. Bring the tin. I will bring the stencil, and we can see whether the pattern holds up when it is no longer ours alone.

Love, Carol