Fine line black outline of a small bow tattoo on a finger of a clenched hand, with leopard print nails.

Small bow outline on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A clenched hand shows a small bow drawn in a single black outline on the side of one finger. The linework is clean and even, with no shading, and the bow has a loop on each side and a knot at the centre. The warm, faded tone of the photo leaves the ink as the only dark element, and a second tattoo is partly visible at the bottom left on the wrist.

Fine line Hand Bow Ribbon Outline

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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

Mrs Ivy Coake had been weaving ribbon in the attic above the dye-works since the spring her husband went to sea, and she never tied a bow without a reason. The loom ran on a treadle that squeaked on the upstroke, so the whole street knew when she was working late. Her silk came from Macclesfield by the hank, and she sold it by the yard to milliners in Bethnal Green who paid in coins and complaints.

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The trouble started with a girl called Pearl Dunmore, who climbed the stairs one wet Thursday with a parcel in brown paper and no money. Inside was a length of blue ribbon gone grey at the edges, and a note asking Ivy to make it new again. Ivy said she could not unpick time, only dye the silk and weave it tighter. Pearl said that would do, so long as the knot in the middle stayed exactly as it was, because her mother had tied it the morning she left for the docks.

Ivy kept the knot. She unpicked the ribbon one loop at a time, rewove the body of it on the squeaking loom, and when the new length was ready she tied the old centre back in with a bone hook, pulling each loop until both sides matched. Pearl came back the next Thursday, took the bow without a word, and left a shilling on the sill, which Ivy dropped in the tin with the others.

Ivy never learned whether the mother came home. She pinned the offcut of grey silk above the loom, and each morning she wound one loop of it around her finger before she took up the shuttle, so the knot would remember what it was for.