Close photo of a black blackletter-style lettering tattoo running vertically along the inside of a forearm, in solid black ink.

Vertical blackletter lettering on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a vertical band of ornate, angular lettering tattooed along the forearm. The letterforms are solid black with sharp, pointed strokes and small flourishes, separated by thin black vertical rules. The background is softly blurred, showing a white garment and a pale surface, with a darker vignette around the edges.

Lettering Forearm Lettering Script

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Haddow never let me set the headings on a Friday, not since the business with the Pemberton banns, so I was surprised when he hung the proof on my case and said the Lowther order was mine. Blackletter, he said, the kind the old Bible printers used, with thin rules either side so the letters stood up like railings. It was for the chapel noticeboard in Tallow Hill, six inches of it, and the words were already typed on a card in his sloping hand.

Keep reading

I cut the matrices myself that week, filing each serif until the points were sharp enough to catch the lamplight. The letters came out angular and black, all hooks and spurs, and every time I locked one into the forme I thought of my mother's knitting needles. Mr Haddow stood behind me on the Thursday night with his tea going cold and read the lines upside down, the way printers do, one finger tapping the rule.

When the forme was inked and the first sheet pulled, he held it to the lamp and went quiet. Then he said the thing I still remember: that a word set in black letter could be read from the top or the bottom and mean the same, if you were patient enough to turn your head. I asked him what the word was. He only folded the sheet into his coat and told me to clean the rollers.

Nobody in Tallow Hill ever saw that notice. It went up on the chapel wall the Sunday after, and by the Tuesday it had been taken down and carried off in somebody's Sunday coat. I still have the spare proof, though, pinned inside my cabinet drawer. Turn it sideways and the rules run straight as a rail, and every letter stands guard over the one beside it.