Black and grey drawing of a skull filled with bold tribal patterns, spirals and woven shapes, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Tribal-patterned skull design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A profile drawing of a human skull with the cranium, eye socket, jaw and teeth outlined. The skull is filled with dense bold blackwork patterns, including spirals, woven bands, fan-shaped scales and triangular teeth. The image is monochrome black ink with grey shading on a plain off-white background.

Blackwork Skull Tribal pattern Spiral Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the nets came in off the Gannet last night torn to ribbons again, and Mr Penhale says the mackerel have gone deep and so must we. I sat up with the lamp until three working the mesh back into shape, plaiting the cords over and under the way Mam taught us, until my fingers were the colour of tar.

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The loft smells of creosote and wet hemp. A surveyor from the council came down on Tuesday with a clipboard and asked what the carvings over the door meant. I told him they were there before any of us. The old skull Grandad nailed above the beam still has its jaw hinged with wire, and its teeth, cut like little black sharks, catch the light whenever the door swings. He wanted to know if it was meant to frighten people off. I said it was meant to make them slow down and count the knots.

Here is the odd part. The scales on top of the skull had split in the gale, so I opened the back of it to re-tack the leather, and tucked inside was a folded paper in your handwriting from when you were nine. It said: I will bring Ellen a whale's tooth. I never did get her one, and she never stopped asking. I have sewn the paper back in under the spiral cord, where the wind cannot reach it, and I have not told her yet.

Come home when the tide turns. Bring the boat paint for the door, and tell Penhale the nets are his problem now. Ellen has your old jumper on for the walk to school and says it smells of you, which is nonsense, but I let her have it.

Your sister, Nan.