Two hands with white ink mandala and chevron designs on the palms, backs and fingers, plus lace-like bands around the wrists and forearms.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

White ink mandalas on hands and wrists

Geometric · Hand · Colour · Photo

Two hands and forearms are shown with white ink designs, including a large circular mandala on each palm and back of the hand, small chevron marks on the fingers, and ornate lace-like bands around the wrists and forearms. The lines are fine and symmetrical, with dense dotted detail in the centres of the mandalas. The white ink stands out against the skin, and the plain light background keeps the focus on the designs.

Geometric Fine line Hand Forearm Mandala Chevron Floral Lace pattern White ink

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook on the Marigold Tern had the cleanest hands aboard, because every evening after the last pot was scoured she washed them in lime water until the knuckles split, then painted them white with a goose quill. The crew called it her gloving. Nobody asked why, though the mate, Tobias Renn, asked once and got a plate of burnt bread for his trouble.

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In the third week out from Hull, a squall came down off the Dogger Bank and the bell rope fouled in the rigging. The men on deck could not see the bow for spray, and the boy who went up to clear it did not come down. The cook climbed the ladder with her white hands bare, reached the boy in the ratlines, and drew a ring on the wood of the mast with her palm where the salt had crusted. Her grandmother had taught her that a circle closes a door, and she meant to close the wind out.

The squall did not stop, but it turned, as if it had been told where to go. The boy came down with the rope in his fist and a ring of white lace printed on his wrist from her fingers. Afterwards the crew asked her to paint them too, and she did, one wrist at a time, chevrons on the fingers so the hands knew which way to point.

The next morning there were eleven men lined up at the galley hatch, each holding out a wrist, and the cook counted them off as if they were loaves going into the oven. When she reached the mate, he looked down at his own pale hand and said nothing, which was the first time anyone had seen him do so.