Small black serif lettering, the letters B, I, X, V and I stacked at an angle, on the side of a hip in a close photograph.

Stacked serif letters on a hip

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up photograph of a small black tattoo on darker skin, made up of the letters B, I, X, V and I in a serif typeface. The letters are stacked and rotated at an angle, with solid black ink and clean edges. The frame is tightly cropped to the skin, with a red cord and beaded bracelets visible at the right edge.

Lettering Other Letter

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

Dear Ada, the ship has rolled for nine days now and the type case has come loose twice, so I have spent my watches on my knees in the hold picking Caslon sorts out of the bilge water. You would laugh. The foreman said a fount that has been to sea needs its sorts counted before it can be trusted to print anything, so I count them, every one, lowercase first, then the capitals, then the figures, until my eyes go strange and the letters start to look like the shapes of the coast we left.

Keep reading

Among the capitals there are five that will not behave. The B has a foot like a bent nail, the I is a hair too tall, and the X and the V have been shaken loose and fallen into each other's compartments, so that when I lay them on the stick they lean together like drunks on a quay. Mr Haddow says to leave them for the Valparaiso men to sort out. I cannot leave them. I keep turning them over, reading them backwards in the lamplight, and sometimes I think they spell something I haven't been told yet.

Last night, with the lamp swinging, I stacked them as a proof, two lines and one, the way the title sheet of the Gazette used to sit before the war took our forme. BI over X over VI. Read it upside down and it is a sum that never finishes. Read it in the mirror on the cabin door and the serifs lift like little flags. I set it as a joke for myself and then I could not unset it.

I am sending this with the first mail from Tenerife, so you know I am alive. Keep the old Gazette sorts in the drawer for me. When I come home I will teach you to read a mirror.