Black and grey blackwork tribal chest tattoo with symmetrical spirals and a central motif, shown on a bare torso with hands resting over the breasts.

Symmetrical tribal chest piece

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical tribal design sits centrally across the chest, with a tall pointed motif rising from the middle and two curved bands sweeping outwards. The linework is fine and dense, with spiral scrolls, wave-like curls and small ornamental fills in solid black ink. The photograph is black and white, with the subject's hands framing the design and the navel piercing visible below.

Blackwork Chest Tribal pattern Polynesian Spiral Scrollwork Symmetrical design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your chairs in, the lot of you, and mind the gull on that bollard. This is about Nell Corrigan's net loft at Porthgwen, and the winter the herring came in so thick the harbour wall groaned under them.

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Nell carved prow boards for every boat that left the slip, and she had a way of cutting the sea that nobody liked. Her pointed motif rose from the middle of the board like a split leaf, with a curl either side that she called the wake. Old Abel Teague, who had been fishing since before the lifeboat had a roof, told her the curls were too tight. A sea cut that tight, he said, would never lie down flat. She cut them anyway, spiral after spiral, with a gouge she kept sharp on the back step, and she would not say why.

The Mary Ann went out on a Tuesday with a westerly building behind her. The tide turned in the bay, and the boat came broadside to a swell that should have rolled her under. Abel swore afterwards that the water went round the bow instead of over it, bending at every curl the way it bends round a rock that knows where it is. They came up the slip at dawn with eleven men and a hold full of silver.

Abel came to the loft the next morning, sat on the sawhorse, and asked her to cut a name into the board, his wife's, so the sea would know who waited. Nell took the knife and cut one more spiral instead. You can still see it, if you go down to the boat shed on a low tide. Count the curls on that board and you will find twelve, one for each man who came home.