Colour traditional tattoo on the upper arm showing a woman's face with a toothed lower edge framed by red flowers, teal leaves and a bell-shaped base.

Traditional face and flowers on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large colour tattoo on the upper arm shows a stylised woman's face with heavy-lidded eyes, set within a bell-shaped form edged with a row of teeth. Red flowers sit above and below the figure, with teal leaves, a scalloped band and a fine tapering stem completing the central column. Bold black outlines and smooth red, teal, yellow and grey shading give a classic traditional look, centred in a vertical composition.

Traditional Upper arm Face Eye Teeth Flower Leaves Scallop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bell came up out of the harbour on the third tide of March, furred green and gaping, and Ada Pryce sat on the quay wall with her boots unlaced and watched the men winch it onto the cart. Nobody in Carrow Bay could say who had hung it off the Ness post, only that the fog had been thick the morning the Lark went missing and the bell had not rung once.

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Her grandmother had warned her about bells with faces. A face in brass, she said, was a face that remembered. Ada scrubbed it that night in the scullery with coarse salt and vinegar while the kettle ticked. Under the rust the painted eyes came up heavy-lidded and green, and the rim of teeth caught the lamplight like a row of pale pegs. Crimson roses, bright as the day they were laid on, crowned the top, and a ribbon of scallops ran beneath them like the frill on a Sunday hat.

At the turn of midnight she lifted the bell by its iron yoke and gave it one stroke with the wooden mallet. The note went out low and slow over the water, and far off, past the breakwater, a lamp swung once in answer. Ada counted the seconds between the strokes. Then a voice rose out of the fog, thin and cracked, calling her grandmother's name as if it had only stepped out to fetch the tea.

Ada hung the bell back on its post, face to the sea, and took the lantern down the steps. Somebody had to bring the boys home, and the bell would not manage it alone.