Wearing Your Dreams — The History of Tattooing
“You can’t know a tattoo artist without wondering about the world history of this ancient human fetish. Clément Demers’ Montreal tattoo studio was filled with books, articles and old photos collected and inherited from his papa/mentor and I couldn’t resist delving into them. ”
Figurine of Japanese tattoo artist tattooing a Geisha s back, displayed in the Tattoo Museum in Amsterdam
The World’s Oldest and Most Controversial Folk Art
It’s as old as skin, as fascinating as sex. In one epoch, in one country, the world’s most ancient and intimate folk art is tabu—banned, outlawed, forbidden. In another time, another place, it’s ritualized by sacred tradition or by society’s fads—and adopted by society’s adventurous fringes. The picaresque world of convicts, pimps, prostitutes, circus freaks; artists, performers, musicians, politicians, and the so-called “eccentrics.“ Throughout the ages these two Polynesian words—tattoo and tabu—have been consequentially intertwined. This curious human urge to get marked for life see-saws from ban to boom, and tabu to fad from one epoch and one part of the world to another.
Tattoo is the form of body decoration with the longest and most provocative history, and the most profound and universal psychic origins. The world of tattoo is a metaphor for the world, with its dualities and extremes of good and evil. Tattoo designs express the entire spectrum of existence from Heaven to Hell, with images that can uplift or destroy the human spirit.
“Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia
Say have you met Lydia
She has muscles men adore-so
And a torso even more-so
Oh, Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of tattoo?
Tra la la...
Oh Lydia that Queen of them all..
When her robe is unfurled
She will show you the world
Won’t you step up and tell her where
For a dime you can see Wai Kee Kee or Paree...
Tra la la
Oh Lydia oh Lydia
Say have you met Lydia
Lydia the Tattooed Lady
When her muscles start relaxin’
Down the hill comes Andrew Jackson
Lydia oh Lydia that encyclopedia
For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz
With a view of the Grand Canyon that nobody has
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz
You can learn so much from Lydia.
Tra la la.....
Oh Lydia Oh Lydia
Say have you met Lydia
Lydia the Tattooed Lady?
When she stand her lap grows littler
When she sits she sits on Hitler
Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopedia
Lydia the Queen of them all!
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat
And now the Old Boy’s in command of the fleet
He went and married Lydia...
”
Enjoy the full lyrics to “Oh Lydia” as performed by composer Groucho Marx himself. It’s a hoot!
“CONTINUED...
...Oh, Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of tattoo.
On her back is the battle of Waterloo.
Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus too
and proudly above waves the red white and blue.
You can learn a lot from Lydia
There’s Grover Walen unveilin’ the Trylon
Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island.
There’s Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
And Lady Godiva—but with her pajamas on.
She can give you a view of the world in tattoo...
Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia, now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of them all?
If you step up and tell her
Where Mon Paree,
Kankakee, even Perth by the sea
Or of Washington crossing the Delaware.
She has a view of Niagara which nobody has
And Basin Street known as the birthplace of jazz
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz!
You can learn a lot from Lydia!
-Lydia the queen of tattoo!
”
Religious tattoos
Getting tattooed for religious and spiritual reasons is an ancient, persistent tradition even in our Western culture, even though the Koran and the Bible forbid body marking.
Moses in Leviticus 19:28 commanded “you shall not tattoo yourselves.” Yet pilgrims to Mecca and Jerusalem marked their journeys with religious tattoos, and tattoos of the Crucifix, the Virgin Mary, and Holy Spirit “doves” were popular among New Testament Christians. (In the future let no one make trouble for me, for I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body. Galatians 6:17)
At the Northumberland Synod of 787 A.D. Pope Hadrian I banned tattooing, yet later medieval European monks and craftsmen became quite skilled in the art. During the early Crusades, Christians marked their pilgrimages with Coptic tattoos.
Pilgrims visiting the Italian Shrine of Loretta between 1200-1800 had their wrists tattooed. In the 17th century the Christian Church banned tattooing again, while the Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches encouraged it.
Christian missionaries nearly succeeded in wiping out tattooing among “heathens” the world over. Missionaries regarded tattooing as grotesque, savage, warlike, demoniac, sado-masochistic, and unhygienic. They feared the ways in which tattoo designs accentuated the naked body, and how tattooing rituals reinforced tribal codes. Sometimes the missionaries’ fears were justified: In Borneo the stripes tattooed on a Dayak tribeman’s hand showed off his prowess as a head hunter.
Tattoo as punishment
Throughout history, tattoos have also been used to stigmatise their wearers, even before Nazis tattooed numbers on concentration camp victims, and Russians tattooed Gulag Archipelago dissidents. In ancient China facial tattooing was one of the Five Classical Punishments. Greeks and Romans tattooed their slaves and prisoners of war. During Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1867) criminals had their faces tattooed with the Japanese character for “DOG.” British Army deserters got a half-inch “D” tattooed on their cheeks, and “persons of bad character” got “B C” pricked with needles and rubbed with India ink. Decoration or disfigurement? However you see it, tattoo has survived through the millennia. Despite the ephemeral quality of its objects d’art—human bodies—the art has continued to evolve to astonishing aesthetic and technical standards.
In film and fiction
In the West, tattoos have intrigued generations of novelists, playwrights, filmmakers. In Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, magical images tattooed by a sorceress foretell the futures of those who gaze upon them. Tennessee Williams used the powerful motif of a Rose Tattoo in his play of that name.
In an episode of FOX TV’s The X-Files, a man’s tattoos turn him into a psychotic killer because of the toxic fermented rye—a powerful hallucinogen—in the ink. And in Bob Brooks’ film Tattoo, a psychopathic tattoo artist kidnaps and tattoos a model and holds her hostage in a beach house—until she stabs him with his tattoo machine.
Tattoos are as mainstream and yet as cultish as UFO’s and Aliens from Outer Space. Tattooers, many with Master of Fine Arts degrees, are likened to wizards and shamans who annoint the faithful with inks. The tatooos and the tattooed are the subject of talk shows, magazine and newspaper articles, web sites, cigarette ads and high fashion spreads.
And now even fake, temporary tattoos have spawned a mini-industry, with temp tats decals popping out of cereal boxes, tattoo designs on bandaids, and parlors where you can get temporary tattoos with hennae and other herbal dyes, in the ancient Arabic and Hindu art of Mendhi. Tattoos are invading the kiddie culture with the “Tattoodles” doll, and as the Barbie doll comes of age, you can even find made-to-order Harley Davidson Barbies with custom-designed tattoos.
Charles Darwin wrote that there is no nation on earth that does not know phenomenon of tattoo. Portland, Oregon tattoo artist Mary Jane Haake maintains that body decoration is a kind of language spoken through hairstyles and coloring, pierced ears and noses, cosmetics and tattooing. “In all societies,” she says “the man or woman who is not decorated in some way—changed from their natural state-is decoratively inarticulate.”
Who among us wants to be regarded as “decoratively inarticulate.”
Marked for life
For millennia humans have been getting marked for life—in caves and tribal huts, in prison cells, on battlefields, at fairs, markets, carnival arcades, in circus tents, aboard sailing ships, in the back rooms of barber shops, in honkey-tonk tattoo parlors and toney new “Skin Illustration Salons.”
Instruments that have been used for tattooing include shark’s teeth, seabird quills, chisels made from albatross bones, human bones, quartz, volcanic glass, bamboo splinters, iron strikers, awls and gouges, bone needles, steel sewing needles, guitar strings, ball point pens and modern “electric engraving pens.”
Humans have been getting marked for life for money or love or fame, or to prove their courage, to mark a rite of passage, to “influence the fates,” to restore youth, or to ensure safe passage to the hereafter. And sometimes even for medical reasons, believing that a tattoo will relieve rheumatism, toothache, headache or boost the immune system.
Tattoos have been used as clan markings, conversation pieces, erotic ornaments, love knots and love charms, and memorials to the dead. Tattoos have been used to create indelible eyebrows, beauty marks, rouge, lipstick. And believe it or not—even virile-looking facial beard stubble and chest hair.
As for crass reasons, how about getting tattooed for a free lunches? In San Francisco a Mexican restaurant offered a lifetime of free lunches to anyone willing to get a tattoo of its logo, Jimmy the Corn Man, a sombrero-wearing mariachi riding a blazing corncob. Just show the cashier the tattoo—any size, on any part of the body—for a free burrito.
Tattoos for protection
In some cultures getting marked for life is for protection—from evil eyes, witches, snake bites, shark attacks, sword cuts, and even bullets. “Stop Bullet” tattoos were used by the Karens of northern Thailand and Burma against the Burmese Central Army, and by the Thai army and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.
Australian Aborigines tattooed themselves for protection against enemy boomerangs. Japanese firemen tattooed skin dragons to protect themselves from fire. Melanesian fishermen inked dolphins into their dermis as talismans against shark attacks. And the divers of the Wa people in China inked themselves with colorful body suits to scare off predatory fish.
Ritual instruments and artifacts used in tattooing displayed in Amsterdam’s Tattoo Museum
A preposterous variety
Tattoo designs are of a preposterous variety, from macho to mellow, geometric, abstract, spiral, simple and bold or intricate and stylised. From modest hearts and butterflies, to cobwebs tattooed on elbows, checkered socks tattooed on feet...hula girls that sway at the flex of a biceps....to elaborate scenes of The Last Supper, Moses Parting the Dead Sea, the entire text of The U.S. Constitution and The Declaration of Independence... Lincoln Freeing the Slaves...Mount Rushmore’s presidential mugs inked onto human backs…Don Quixote chasing a windmill around a buttock, a six-inch pizza with mushrooms and anchovies, baking on a calf, and the whole Starship Enterprise launched off a back.
How about Alfred Hitchcock’s jowly mug surrounded by technicolour images of the eerie Victorian house in Psycho ...a shreiking woman attacked by feathered fiends in The Birds ...the crop duster from North by Northwest and Jimmy Stewart in a wheelchair in Rear Window... Hitchcock’s face is place just so, when the tattooed Hitchcock fan flexes his latissimus dorsi, the filmmaker arches his eyebrows!
Alfred Hitchcock retrospective tattooed on human flesh, seen at the Montreal International Tattoo Exposition
How many movies can you find?
Or how about covering up your “birthday suit” with an elaborate “body suit” that takes hundreds of hours to tattoo?
From head to toe, there are skin illustrations on places on the human body you’d never dream of. Like the tongue, inside of the mouth, lips—and places best left unmentioned! And although it sounds gruesome, some tattooed celebrities have “sold their skins” to collectors while they’re still alive—for thousands of dollars! And some of these are eventually exhibited in special museums.
Tattoos evoke embarrassment and awe, rage and outrage, amusement and wonderment. But is it the act of getting marked for life—or the particular image, that we react to the most?
The story of tattoo is one of the oldest and most fascinating stories of human existence. It is still being written—in brighter colored inks than ever before, made from titanium dioxide, ferric oxide, guanine, mica, annatto, bismuth citrate, chromium hydroxide and other non-toxic pigments.
Although today’s tattoo needles have evolved from the thick “jackhammer” liners and shaders that tested a sailor’s bravado, to today’s superfine needles capable of very delicate lines, the tattoo machine that drives them hasn’t changed since 1891 when New York Bowery tattoo artist Samuel F. O’Reilly, working in his shop at #10 Chatham Square, patented his revolutionary “Electric Engraving Pen.”
Tattooed Cave People
How old is tattooing? As old as cave dwellers, at least. Caves excavated in France, Portugal, Romania and Scandinavia have been found with bowls dating to 8,000 BC. which contained traces of black and red pigments, sharp-pointed flints, reindeer antler needles and statuettes bearing tattoo-like marks.
Statuettes with tattoo designs have also been unearthed in Egyptian tombs. These “brides of the dead” were buried with male mummies to ensure the males’ rebirth by arousing their sexual instincts. Excavated mummies also show that dancers, singers and concubines were tattooed with the symbol of Bes, Egyptian God of Music and Revelry.
The oldest tattooed body ever discovered was that of a Bronze Age hunter who died over 5,000 years ago in a snowstorm in the Alps. The Bronze Age hunter’s body, discovered in 1991 on a mountain between Austria and Italy, was tattooed with a cross inside his left knee, and six straight lines above his kidneys.
The world's most spectacular tattooed mummy was discovered by Russian anthropologist Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1948 while he was excavating some tombs 120 miles north of the Chinese-Russian border. The tombs were of the Pazyryks, Iron Age warriors who inhabited the steppes of Eastern Europe and Western Asia between 600-200 BC. The tombs contained embalmed humans, horse skeletons, saddles, riding gear, musical instruments, Persian fabrics and preserved body of a Pazyryk chieftain.
Elaborately tattooed chieftain
Figurines representing Burmese tattooing and manuscripts on tattooing, displayed in Amsterdam’s Tattoo Museum
The Pazyryk chieftain was elaborately tattooed with a donkey, mountain ram, long-antlered deer, two griffin-like beasts, a fish swimming from the foot to the knee...a monster crawling over the right foot, and four rams running up his shins. The chief’s spinal column was tattooed with a series of small circles to relieve back pain, a practice used among Siberian tribesmen.
Ancient traveling tattooers
Egypt, the Cradle of Civilization was also the Cradle of Tattoo. From Egypt the tattooing arts spread across the world, to appear, disappear and reappear throughout recorded history. Egyptians were renowned traders, and as they were building the great pyramids of Gizeh between 2800-2600 B.C. they were also spreading the indelible dermal arts throughout the Mediterranean, and further east to Persia and Arabia.
The cult of tattooing travelled north from Egypt to the British Isles, where it was adopted by the Iberians and later Celts, Gauls and Teutons. Sea-faring Danes, Norseman and Saxons who invaded Britain brought tattoos of a more artistic kind—elaborate tribal symbols and family crests punctured on their bodies (a custom still surviving among certain aristocratic Scottish families) .
Shamanistic tattooing
By 2000 B.C. tattooing had spread across Southern Asia to south of the Yangtze Kiang in China. The Shans of Southern China developed their own style and passed it to the Burmese, who integrated it into their magical and religious rituals. “Charmed tattooing,”—used for good or evil—was widespread in Burma until the late 19th century.
Burmese tattooing designs and instruments, displayed in Amsterdam’s Tattoo Museum
Burmese tattoo shamans were as powerful as Haitian voodoo priests, and used secret chants to create tattoos that were benevolent or evil. Like Haitians voodoo bokkors who turned unsuspecting victims into zombis, Burmese used the dreadful a-kyan-se chant to transform a person into a Baw-di-tha-das, a maniac possessed with supernatural powers.
By 1100 B.C. tattooing was practiced in Formosa, the Philippines, Borneo and Polynesia. Between 450 B.C.—900 A.D., the Polynesians spread throughout the Pacific, populating Hawaii, Samoa, and New Zealand and planting the roots of tattoo.
Tattoos used as fingerprints
In New Zealand, the aboriginal Maoris created “Moko” an astonishly intricate style of facial and body tattooing whose tribal designs have become fashionable in the West.
Maoris believed that their personalities were actually imprinted into their facial tattoos; that they narrated their personal histories and geneology and attested to their bravery. These facial Mokos—a kind of permanent warpaint—could be terrifying to behold, especially when a warrior grimmaced. After a Moko warrior was killed in battle, it was the custom to cut off his head and carefully preserve it.
Moko tattooing display in Amsterdam’s Tattoo Museum
Moko patterns also subsituted for fingerprints. When Maori chieftains signed deeds of land to Europeans, they drew the intricate designs of their own facial tattoos—without the aid of mirrors! Maoris believed that their facial tattoos would serve as passports to the spirit realm, that after death a dreadful hag would eat their facial tattoos before guiding them into the spirit world. If the face was not tattooed, the hag would eat the eyeballs instead, blinding the soul for all eternity.
The North American Lakotas have a similar superstition: that the soul travelling along the “Starry Spirit Road”—the Milky Way—encounters the Owl Woman who looks for a tattoo on the wrist. If there is no tattoo, she throws the soul into bottomless space.
We often associate tattoo with the native cultures of Polynesia, Burma and Japan, but in North America, the tradition of tattoo among native peoples, including the Inuit of the Far North is a surprisingly long one. As early as 1100 B.C. tattoo was integral to the cultures of the the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Central and South America.
Old Spanish tattoo poster and tattoo machines, displayed in Amsterdam’s Tattoo Museum
Just when tattooing arrived in the Americas is a mystery. Some anthropologists believe that Polynesians brought tattooing to the Americas during their ocean migrations. Others suggest that the Siberian Chukchee, who learned tattooing from the Ainu in Japan, crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska and spread the art throughout North America.
Europeans first became aware of tattooing in the Americas when Columbus, and later Cortes and Pizzaro, brought home tattooed Amerindians as slaves. But although the Inca civilization at its zenith was more sophisticated than the cultures of many European countries, the Incas tattoos condemned them—in the eyes of Europeans—as “savages.” But what about the savagery of powdered wigs, waist-cinching corsettes, and stiletto heels? “Savagery” is in the eye of the beholder...
Tattoo still retains its shock value
To be or not to be tattooed. It's a question more and more people from all backgrounds and professions are flirting with. In more primitive times, humans got tattooed to camouflage their bodies for hunting, to terrorize an enemy, or for magical protection. Today people are getting tattooed for an endless variety of reasons, and the more visually oriented a society we become, the wilder the tattoo imagination grows. The stereotype of a tattooed person is losing ground, along with the stereotype of the tattoo artist as a sordid character or a third-rate artist. Still, these Polynesian words "tattoo" and "tabu" seem destined to be interlinked. Of all the taboos that have dissolved in our affluent, accelerated Western society, tattoo still retains its shock value.
Each tattoo revival builds on the previous revival. Tattooing is enjoying an extraordinary hi-tech renaissance, with super-fine needles and vivid inks, and an astonishing variety of designs drawing on sources from around the world, from pre-literate to contemporary. There’s every tattoo genre imaginable—from native tribal designs to intricate stylised Japanese, to Comic book characters, psychedelic art, stained glass windows, fantasy art, to Celtic knotwork motifs, to commercial logo tattoos.
Some of the more sensational tattoo personalities, include Tattooed Ladies with stage names like Pictura, Serpentina, and Artoria, and the girlish and beloved Betty Broadbent, the Mary Pickford of tattoo—and other various and sundry tattooed circus and sideshow characters. It’s only natural that tattoo artists would choose colorful names like Tats Thomas, Painless Nell and Painful Jo, Dainty Dottie and Lone Wolf, Spider Web, Pulsating Paula, and Sailor Fred.
Tattoo shows, tattoo museums and tattoo conventions cover the globe, from Alaska to Australia. At these giant inkslinging parties where the costume is the skin, legs, backs, shoulders and tenderer parts are bared to the likes of the Blue Dragon from London, Ontario, Skin Deep from Bristol, England, Tom Tattoo from Ancona, Italy, Shark from St. Etienne, France, or Forrest Curl from Philly.
Man becomes leopard
One of the most fascinating tattoo characters of all time has to be Tom Leppard (Oct 14, 1935—June 12, 2016) known as the Leopard man of Skye. In his senior years, Tom got completely tattooed with yellow dye and leopard spots from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Even his eyelids were tattooed - to look like green glowing leopard’s eyes when he closed them. He spent his last years as a recluse living without electricity or running water on the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Hebrides. He lived on £1,000 a year earned from displaying himself once a year at tattoo conventions. Seeing images of him crawling over the rugged island rocks, you would think he was a leopard who didn’t lose his spots, but his sense of place.
Visually-oriented society
Our society is more visually oriented than ever before. In this world bombarded with images, people have become more open to the idea of body decoration, both permanent and temporary. As our society and its relationships, and our work-lives becomes more quixotic and ephemeral, we’re looking for things that last. Tattoos last - as least as long as our human skins!
Around the world, there’s a resurgence of interest in aboriginal art, from Hawaii, Australia, Polynesia, to the arts of Native peoples of the Americas. These factors, combined with the sophistication of the tattoo technology—which allows nearly any image which can be conceived to be tattooed on the human body—has contributed to an unprecendented rise of the tattoo arts in our time.
Up until the Norman invasion in 1066, tattooing was rather commonplace in the British Isles. After that there's little evidence of it in Europe for at least six centuries. During this period Europe was seemingly unaware of the heights to which tattooing had evolved in Japan, and among native peoples.in the Americas.
The aboriginal Ainu people who dwelled in the northernmost islands of Japan regarded tattoo as a divine gift, and used it for protection. The Japanese adopted this ancient Ainu art purely for its ornamental value, evolving designs which were unsurpassed for their color, expression of movement and three-dimensional use of shading and light.
In 17th century Japan, when a decree forbade the lower classes to wear fine clothes, peasants rebelled by tattooing their bodies with exquisitely-colored body suits. Such tattooed works of art cost a life's savings and took years to complete, but with only a loincloth a poor man could rival a king. This "Irezumi" body art evolved to such a high degree that the owners of ornately tattooed bodies were offered fabulous sums to shed their skins upon death. Many of these tattooed skins are exhibited like tapestries in the Tokyo University Museum and in private galleries.
Australia’s Painted Prince
The 18th century European revival of tattoo in is usually associated with Captain James Cook’s South Sea voyages, but a reawakened awareness of tattooing had actually been sparked in England in 1691 with the arrival of the "Painted Prince." The buccaneer William Dampier was one of the first Europeans to explore Australia. Dampier returned to London from his South Seas voyage in 1691 with a native who was tattooed from head to toe.
Dampier introduced Prince Giolo who became known as the "Painted Prince" to King William and Queen Mary. Overnight, he became a sensation with London's fashionable society—and the first in a long line of bizarre showmen to be trotted out at fairs, markets and circuses.
A broadsheet of the time announced the event:
““Prince Giolo, Son To The King Of Moangis, Or Gilolo; Lying Under The Equator In The Longitude Of 152 Deg. 30Min.; A Fruitful Island Abounding With Rich Spices And Other Valuable Commodities. [..He ]Is The First “Wonder Of The Age” His Whole Body (Except Face, Hands, And Feet) Is Curiously And Most Exquisitely Painted Or Stained...A Lively Representation Of One Quarter-Part Of The World Upon And Betwixt His Shoulders, Where The Arctick And Tropick Circles Centre In The North Pole On His Neck. ..
He Will Be Exposed To Publick View Every Day From The 16Th Of This Instant June, At His Lodgings At The Blew Boar’s Head, In Fleet Street Near Water Lane; Where He Will Continue For Some Time, If His Health Will Permit.””
Tattoo paraphenalia
In 1769 Captain James Cook sailed to the South Seas to explore New Zealand and Tahiti, and in 1771 he returned with the Polynesian word tautau and a sensational souvenir—a heavily-tattooed Polynesian. In Cook's memoirs, The Voyage in H.M.Bark Endeaver, he describes how the Otahitans "tattawed" by pricking indelible designs on the skin with small bone instruments, then filled them in with a dark-blue or black mixture made from the smoke of an oily nut.
Europeans adopted this Polynesian word to describe the process of permanent skin marking. Tattaw became Tattoo in English, Tatowirungz in German, Tatouage in French, and Tatuaggio in Italian.
The "noble painted savage" whom Cook brought back on the H.M.Bark Endeaver came to be known as "The Great Omai." He was shown off in drawing rooms in London, and his epidermal decorations sparked an interest in the tattoo arts among the English bourgeoisie.
In 1828 Britons were shocked and intrigued by newspaper accounts of one John Rutherford, a married Bristol seaman who returned to England after 12 years away, with elaborate tattoos all over his arms, legs, chest, abdomen and face. Rutherford claimed that he'd been captured by Maoris in New Zealand in 1816, held prisoner, forcibly tattooed, and made to marry the Chieftain's daughter.
Rutherford's tale aroused curiosity and sympathy in England. It also made him a pile of money. A printer published a broadsheet about Rutherford's adventures, and Rutherford exhibited himself in London and Bristol—until his story was exposed as a hoax. The truth was perhaps stranger than fiction: Rutherford had really jumped ship, fallen in love with a Maori chieftain's daughter and undergone a painful tattoo initiation ceremony to join the tribe.
“Abducted by savages” scams
Perhaps Rutherford's account inspired other stories like it far across the Atlantic, for "Abducted By Savages" tales were beginning to abound in the the North American carnival and circus worlds. It wasn't unusual for a tattoo artist to ink his wife from head-to-toe to exhibit her, claiming that it was the dastardly work of the savages who had kidnapped her!
As European sailors brought their South Seas tattoos to European ports and North America's great port cities, the revival of interest in tattoo exploded in Europe and in the U.S. and Canada. By 1850, professional tattooists were doing business in France, Germany , Italy, and Algiers. King Edward VII helped to inspire Europe's Golden Age of tattooing when he returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1862 after getting tattooed in Jerusalem .
The New York Bowery’s first tattoo parlor
The first professional tattoo artist to operate in North America may well have been a German immigrant named Martin Hildebrandt, who published a tattoo memoir in New York in 1870. Hildebrandt landed in Boston in 1846 and began tattooing full time. The Civil War was a hot time for patriotic tattoos, and Hildebrandt exploited this. Between 1861 and 1865 he worked in the thick of the battles between the armies of General Grant and General Lee—crossing the battle lines to tattoo Northerners and Confederates alike with Union and Confederate flags and emblems. Born in 1825, he died in 1890 in the New York City Asylum for the Insane.
H O L D F A S T
Sailors had the widest exposure to tattoos because they traveled so widely, from port to port. In the days before tattoo machines, sailors passed long hours aboard ship pricking patriotic and protective images into their skin. They mixed gunpowder into the India ink, believing it promoted longevity. They superstitiously tattooed a pig on one foot and a rooster on the other to protect them from drowning. (These barnyard animals can't swim, so they would get the seaman quickly to shore.)
Tattooing the words HOLD on the knuckles of one hand and FAST on the other helped the seaman get a better grip on the riggings. A Crucifix tattooed on the back spared them from flogging (what man would dare to strike the face of Jesus!) An anchor tattoo signified a sail across the Atlantic Ocean. A full-rigged ship was a souvenir of a sail around Cape Horn. A shellback turtle signified crossing the Equator, and a golden dragon, the International Date Line.
Sailors were travelling tattoo exhibits, showing off the dragons of the China Station, the Christian tattoos of the Mediterranean and the lush designs of Edo and Yokohama. As they passed through New York's South Street Seaport wearing these exotic designs, they greatly influenced and broadened New York City's concept of tattoo. When their ships docked in New York City’s South Street Seaport, the sailors headed for Chatham Square, the hotpot of entertainment, with its flophouses, cathouses, gin mills, burlesque theaters, beer halls, opium dens, and dime museums where tattooed "canvasbacks" were exhibited.
New York City becomes a tattooing Mecca
Tattooing was popular in New York, and Chatham Square, where The Thief's Highway (the pre-Civil War Bowery) ended on the southern tip of Manhattan, was becoming the most respected tattoo center in the Western world.
In 1891 a New York Bowery tattoo artist named Samuel F. O'Reilly patented the invention he'd been working on since 1875 : the first electric tattoo machine. Its five-needle liners which outlined the design, and eight-needle shaders which filled it in with color were soldered onto a bar which moved like a sewing machine jabbing the skin 3,000 time a minute.
O'Reilly's machine made tattooing fast and profitable, and he was suddenly grossing over $100 a day, a fortune in the 1890's. Soon a crowd of eager self-taught tattooers started getting into the act. Then, in the 1920's, the tattoo industry became further standardised as companies like Zeiss and Spaulding began mass-producing sheets of simple tattoo designs called flash which could be stenciled onto the skin. These flash designs—hearts and flowers, snakes and panthers, flags and anchors—were hung on the walls of tattoo studios, allowing a customer to pick a design, much like picking out a roll of wallpaper.
Tattoo and wallpaper?
Comparing tattoo flash to wallpaper was no joke. Most of the popular tattoo designs of the time HAD been created by a New York City wallpaper hanger named Lew Alberts. Alberts learned tattooing in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900 Alberts quit his wallpaper-hanging job and began designing tattoos inspired by wallpaper patterns. As late as 1933, half of all the tattoo flash in the U.S. was designed by Alberts. No coincidence that a person might '‘look like the walls of grandma's living room!"
Like newspaper ads, Tattoo flash reflected the times. Comic strip characters like Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat were popular tattoo designs, along with stars and starlets of the silver screen. Cosmetic tattooing became the rage, as artists kept busy tattooing beauty marks, rosy cheeks and red lips, right up until the stock market crash of 1929.
With the onset of the Great Depression, Chatham Square's beer halls and burlesque theaters catering to the tattooing crowd closed up. Chatham Square saw breadlines instead of lines of tattoo customers. Then World War II gave New York's tattoo trade a lift. Young men who signed up for the armed forces learned they couldn't be accepted if they had indecent tattoos. They flocked to their favorite needlers to get the naked ladies on their arms covered up—with lingerie, skirts, brassieres, fans, bubbles, flowers, butterflies—anything!
“Essential” war work?
When Charlie Wagner, who apprenticed with Samuel O'Reilly and later became "The Dean of American Tattooing," was called to Court for violating the Sanitary Code, he pleaded that he was doing "essential war work" by tattooing clothes on tattoos of naked women!
Tattooed showmen and ladies
The Great Omi, one of the most popular showmen of his time, was also known as "the Zebra Man" because his head, face, and body were tattooed with bold black zebra-like stripes. Horace Ridler (1892-1969) was born in Surrey, England in to a wealthy family. After serving as a commissioned officer in the British Army, Ridler determined to turn himself into the greatest modern tattoo attraction in the world.
In 1927, after 150 hours of tattooing by famed London tattooist, George Burchett, Ridler became The Great Omi. His wife Gladys Ridler became "Omette," and worked as his agent as job offers rolled from Bertram Mills Circus, Robert Ripley's "Believe It Or Not," Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Bellevue Circus.
Down through the centuries, unusual tattoos have led to many a criminal's downfall. Police have been aided in their investigations by such bizarre tattoos as "This Space for Rent," "Three Qts. Milk, Yogurt and Lestoil," and "55 Chevy: Runs Like New; Call 345-8745 after 6 P.M."
Prostitutes have often used ingeniously located tattoos to assist them in their business ventures. Wrong Way, That'll Be Five Extra Bucks, Out of Order, and Enter At Your Own Risk have all graced various portions of the hooker's anatomy.
Now the question is: is there anywhere on Planet Earth where human beings have not been tattooed?
