Three metallic gold ornamental scroll borders with leaf and curl motifs on a cream background, shown as a design sheet with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three gold scroll border designs on cream

Colour · Flash

The image shows three horizontal ornamental borders in metallic gold or bronze tones on a cream background. The top border has large curling scrolls and leaf forms, the middle one is symmetrical with spiralling curls, and the bottom one is a dense, repeating pattern of small leaves and tendrils. The solid, filled linework and even metallic colour make the designs clear, and the sheet is well lit.

Scroll Leaf Foliage Border Ornament Filigree Curl Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gold leaf came off the book in sheets so thin that Ada had to breathe out before she lifted each one. Mr Tennant kept the pattern drawers at the back of the gilding shop, forty years of scrolls pressed flat between tissue, and he would not let anyone else open the bottom one.

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On the Thursday the drawer stuck. She worked the brass runner loose with a butter knife and found three borders laid face down, their backs stained with size. The top one swept like a wave breaking back on itself. The middle one mirrored itself exactly, curl for curl, as if someone had folded a page and pressed it shut. The bottom was so dense with leaves and tendrils that one pen stroke seemed to have cost a week.

Tennant came in with his coat still on and found her holding the middle border to the window. He did not shout. He took it from her and held it against the lamp, and she saw that the pencil ghost under the ink was her own hand, from the spring she was fourteen, when she had copied the lettering off a hearse plate for practice and he had said it was good enough to keep.

He said nothing about it. He cut a length of gold leaf, laid it along the clock case on the bench, and pressed the first curl down with a squirrel brush. The metal took the lamplight and held it. By closing time the scroll was bright enough that children from the street stood at the glass to watch it turn.