Close view of a small black ampersand tattoo on the lower back of a person with shoulder-length wavy brown hair, in fine line lettering style.

Small ampersand on a back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small black ampersand sits on the lower right side of a bare back, with the subject's wavy brown bob hair falling over the upper shoulder. The ampersand is drawn in thin, even linework with a serif-like form, and the design is in black ink only. The plain pale background and soft lighting keep the focus on the small tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Back Ampersand Symbol

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Vosper kept the ampersand in the top drawer, wrapped in a square of greased paper, because it was the only sort left in the shop that the foundry no longer made. It was a little curl of lead with a hook at its foot, and when the night compositors needed it they came to her rather than the foreman, since she was the one who knew how to lock it into the chase so it would not jam the press.

Keep reading

The city came in after dark. Lamplighters stopped by for matches, a tram driver for tea, and a boy called Sol who swept the floor for coppers and read every spoiled proof left on the stone. One February he asked why the ampersand always went in last, after the names, as if it were an afterthought. Ada told him it was the word that stitched two things into one sentence. Without it, she said, a bill was only a list of separate misfortunes.

The foreman wanted the sort melted for scrap during the lead shortage, and he sent Sol to fetch it. Ada had already slipped it into the lining of her coat. That night she set a single card on the old iron press, the boy's name on one line and the word and on the next, and she pulled three copies by lamplight while the rain ran down the glass. The card was for nobody. She had simply wanted to see the shape of it.

When the shop shut, she pressed the ampersand into Sol's hand inside a matchbox. 'Set your own name on your first job,' she said, 'and put this between it and whoever taught you.' He did, years later, on a card for a bakery on Tanner Row, and the lamps outside were still burning when he locked the frame.