Two black and grey tattoos of Art Nouveau style women in circular frames, one on each forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two Art Nouveau women on matching forearms

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown with tattoos of women in profile, each set within a circular frame decorated with swirling hair and ornament. The figures hold flowers and wear flowing robes, drawn with fine, even outlines and light shading. The tattoos are in black and grey, and the two designs mirror each other across the image.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The second stone came off the press this morning and I have been staring at the pair of them ever since, because they will not stop being mirror images of one another, however hard I try to make them differ. Mr Ashdown wants the circles to be exact. Every curl of hair has to turn the same way on each sheet, so I have been tracing them through tissue paper with a hand that won't keep still. Last night I dreamt the left one had walked off the paper and I found her in the scullery, holding a sprig of lavender as though she had been waiting for the kettle.

The commission is for a music hall in Leeds, two tall panels to hang either side of the stage door, each a woman in profile with a flower in her hands and her robe falling in long grey lines. Ashdown says the ink must be black and nothing else, so the shading has to come from hatching alone. It is slow work. I have ruined three sheets already by pressing too hard, and each one I have dropped in the coal bucket with a sort of guilt, as if I had taken a wrong turn on a stair.

The fourth proof came out right at last, and when I hung the pair side by side on the drying line, I finally saw what Ashdown meant. Turned to face one another, the women look as if they are about to speak, but neither of them will. I think they are the only honest things in the whole building.

Write back soon and tell me Mother is eating.

Yours, Eliza

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