Black and grey tribal ornamental tattoo across a person's lower back and hip, photographed from behind with jeans visible at the waistband.

Tribal ornamental tattoo across lower back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large ornamental tattoo covers the lower back and sides of the hips, with a pattern of arches, scalloped borders, scrollwork and a circular sun-like motif on the right. The linework is fine and dark, with grey shading that gives depth to the bands and the central motif. The design is entirely black and grey and is framed by the curve of the lower back and the waistband of jeans.

Blackwork Back Tribal pattern Scrollwork Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the herring came in on Tuesday like a spill of coins and I have not had a minute since to sit down and write properly, so you will have to put up with this scrawl on the back of the ledger. Your mother asked after you at chapel. I told her you were somewhere off Lowestoft eating ship's biscuit and singing the wrong hymns.

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The pattern you asked me to draw up is finished. I have pinned it to the cutting board so the chalk does not smear. The top row is the arches, the same as the mesh of the trawl where the cod get caught and cannot get out again, each one doubled and knotted at the crown. Below them runs the scalloped border, the one the old Penhallow boys carved on the pew ends, and between the two a band of scrollwork I copied from the bowsprit on the Morwenna, so you will know it when you see it again.

The sun on the right-hand side is the trouble. I could not make the rays sit straight. Every time I rubbed it out and started over, it came out looking like the gulls over the harbour wall at six in the morning, which I suppose is the point. Ada says it should be darker at the centre so it holds the eye, and she is right, she usually is, which is why I am not telling her so.

Come home on the spring tide if you can. Bring the sextant back in one piece this time. I have left the shading until you are here to say whether the grey is right, because I would rather get it from you than guess. Your loving sister, Kit.