Blue and green scrolling floral butterfly design with a dark brown quotation beneath it, reading let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, Psalm 90:17.

Scrollwork butterfly with Psalm 90:17 quote

Colour · Flash

A butterfly is built from ornate, curling foliate scrollwork in gradients of blue, teal and green, with a dark brown body and antennae. Beneath the wings, a handwritten-style quotation reads let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, followed by the reference Psalm 90:17. The design is centred on a plain white background with the text set in two lines and a smaller reference line.

Butterfly Scrollwork Swirl Quote Bible verse Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pryce had been lettering shop fronts on Castle Street since before the war, but by the spring of 1956 his hand had started to shake on the long strokes. I held the mahl stick steady while he finished the last of the verse on the chapel board, the linseed sharp enough to sting my eyes and the paint still tacky under the lamp.

Keep reading

The Methodists wanted something for the Whit fair, a board they could hang in the porch with a butterfly on it. Pryce drew the wings freehand with a stick of charcoal, starting at the body and working outwards, and told me scrollwork was like weather. You let it go where it wants and steer by feel. By the time he had the lower wings curling like fern heads, I had stopped asking him where the lines were going.

On the left wing there was a curl that sat a fraction too low against the others. I couldn't leave it alone. I reached for the brush, and he took it off me and flicked the tip back into the blue. "Leave it. The verse doesn't say the beauty of the Lord is in the paint, lad. It says upon us. It's a thing that lands on you while you're stood about getting wet."

The fair was rained off, so the board hung in the porch all that week with the water running off the eaves in a grey curtain. I went past it every morning on my way to the shop. The teal in the lower wings caught the light whenever the clouds broke, and the curl I'd wanted to fix looked, in that light, exactly where it belonged. Pryce's knuckles stayed stained green for a fortnight after, and I stopped trying to scrub mine clean.