Black and grey realism style cameo tattoo of a skull woman with a red rose in her hair, set in an ornate frame on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull cameo with rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A cameo of a skeletal woman in profile, with a red rose tucked into her hair, sits inside an ornate scrolled frame. The skull and face are rendered in smooth greyscale shading, with fine detail in the hair and the scrollwork. Small script at the base of the oval reads Memento Mori, and the red rose is the only colour against the grey and black.

Realism Neo-trad Forearm Skull Cameo Rose Woman Skeleton Frame Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp wick had to be trimmed before the fog came off the Skerry, and I was still on my knees on the gallery when the bell rang twice below. I did not go down straight away. Mrs Ashdown's cameo sat in my waistcoat pocket, and I had been turning it over with my thumb since noon, the way a man counts coins he is not sure he has.

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She brought it to the station the week after the Caroline went down with her husband and two lads from Port Isaac. There was no stone for them, only a name chalked on the chandler's board. She wanted something she could keep against her skin. I cut the plate myself in the store: a woman in profile with bone showing under the cheek and a red rose pushed into her hair. I had the engraver scroll a frame round it like a Sunday mirror, and round the foot of the oval he lettered MEMENTO MORI, because I thought she should have to read it every time she opened the case.

The boat came up out of the grey with its oars shipped, and a young man stood in the stern holding a canvas bag. He would not look at the tower. He asked for Mrs Ashdown by name, and I told him she had died in March, the cough, and that I had kept the cameo for her. He opened the bag and took out a rose pressed flat and gone brown at the edges. He asked if I could fix it in the frame. I said nothing for a long while. Then I went down to the store and found the little brass pins.

By dark the lamp was lit and the cameo sat on the sill of the lantern room, the one red thing in all that grey, and I left it there so the boats could see it.