Large black and grey traditional back tattoo of a woman's face within a rose, with wings above, leaves, swallows and a lace-style border, on a person's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman's face in a rose across the back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows a woman's face framed by a rose, with a winged motif above and leaves around the petals. Two swallows sit in the lower section above a lace-like scalloped border, and a dotted ornamental band runs across the top. The work is built from bold black outlines and solid grey shading on a warm skin tone, with a symmetrical composition that follows the spine.

Traditional Blackwork Back Woman Face Rose Wing Leaves Swallow Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mavis had counted the same eight bars for a quarter of an hour when the band finally gave up on the foxtrot and drifted into something slower. The floor of the Palais at Brightwell smelled of French chalk and spilt lemonade, and the new girl from the lace counter was still standing by the pillar with her gloves on, pretending she had not been asked.

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"You'll have to take the first step yourself," Mavis told her, "or the boys will think you're made of cardboard."

Dolly Penhaligon looked at her as though she had offered a kidney. But Dolly's mother had sewn the trim on every frock in the hall, and the scalloped hem of Dolly's dress was Mavis's own pattern, copied from a swallow's tail in a book of Japanese prints her brother had carried home from the docks. Something about that little border had made Dolly brave enough to cross the floor.

They danced. The swallows that had nested under the pier roof all summer came swooping past the open doors, black against the lamplight, and the boys in their brilliantine clapped at them as if they had arranged the whole evening. Mavis watched Dolly's feet and forgot her own.

At the last waltz the lights dimmed to amber. Dolly pressed a folded paper into Mavis's palm, a pencilled sketch of a rose with a face in its centre, wings lifting above it and a lace border running underneath. "For your cuff," she said, and the band was loud enough to cover it. Mavis tucked the drawing inside her glove, already thinking of the man on Sallow Street who never asked what a design meant.