Metallic silver and gold mandala design on a woman's upper back, with a filigree drop down the spine and a patterned armband on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Silver mandala and filigree back design

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A woman with her back to the camera wears a light blue open-back dress with thin straps. A large ornate mandala-style flower sits between her shoulder blades, with a vertical filigree drop extending down the spine, and a matching patterned band is worn on her upper arm. The designs appear metallic in silver and gold, with fine lacy detailing and a shallow focus on the woman's skin against a soft green background.

Back Upper arm Mandala Flower Filigree Armband Pattern Spine Metallic

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The commission came up the lane on Tuesday in a borrowed cart, wrapped in oilcloth, and I have not slept properly since. The client wants a flower the size of a saucer, a mandala, she called it, with petals that open like the seed heads of the old willows by the mill pond. I told her a flower that size in silver wire would sag under its own weight within a week. She laughed and said that was why she had come to me and not the tin man in town.

So I have been at the bench since first light. Forty-one circles of wire, each no thicker than a hair from your mother's brush, curled round the pin and soldered at the crossings with a flame so small I have to hold my breath. I have run a thread of gold through the petals so they catch the light differently when they turn. The middle is the hard part. Every ring must sit inside the last like ripples that have forgotten where the stone went in. When I finally got the centre to lie flat I sat back and found a wood pigeon on the sill, watching the sun catch the wire.

Below the flower she wants a drop, a thin chain of lace that hangs a long way, pierced and scrolled, ending in a small curled tongue of silver. I am making it from the offcut of Grandfather's sugar tongs, which I thought you would like to know, since you always said they were too pretty to melt.

I will finish the armband on Saturday. Come home if you can. The forest is coming into leaf and I want you to see the lace before she takes it away.

Love, Dad