Archive for History of Tattoos
Women and Tattoos: Two Books Tell the Tale
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When we think of women and tattoos, we don’t always think of the kind of tattoos that Olive Oatman had back in the 1850s. But her story, and the story of the history of women and tattoos is beautifully outlined in a pair of books by Margot Mifflin. Both books are the subject of an upcoming discussion on several websites for Women’s History Month. I found it interesting to read her commentary about women and tattoos.
In her book The Blue Tattoo, she tells the story of Olive Oatman, a woman who as a young girl was kidnapped by the Yavapi tribe and enslaved by them. They in turn sold her to the Mohave, who adopted her and in the process gave her a blue tattoo on her chin to mark her as part of their people. When the U.S. Army ransomed her, she left her adopted family against her will and was forced to try and integrate herself into white culture with this tattoo that marked her as alien for the rest of her life.
It is a great symbol of how tattoos for so long have marked individuals as part of some group, in this case one that she was removed from and never allowed to rejoin. Her story of being a woman in both camps, and how the tattoo marked her as such, makes for amazing reading.
The other book, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, explores the connection women have had to tattooing and gives us a history of that connection from the mid-1800s to present day. In a recent interview Mifflin talks about the current popularity of tattooing for women and notes that currently more women are getting tattoos than men. She credits much of this to the need, especially since the 1980s, for women to feel that they have more control over their bodies. Tattoos are one way to make a statement about this.
No matter how you look at women and tattoos, from the perspective of history or the question of body politics, women and tattoos will always be a topic that will raise as many questions as it gives answers. If you are someone who is curious about this, like I am, you may well want to check these books out. What you read may surprise as well as delight you.
Tattooing in 19th Century Europe
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For most of us, the thought is that tattoos are a modern thing, but nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is tattooing was popular among the lower classes in 19th Century Europe. It has been estimated that as much as 80% of the British Navy had a tattoo by the end of the century. Because the tattoos were used to denote ports of call and oceans travelled, they were important status symbols amongst the sailing class in Europe at the time.
Royal Tattoos
The one person who really made tattooing popular amongst the upper class however was when the Prince of Wales visited Jerusalem in 1862 and had a tattoo done at the time to commemorate the visit. It was a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross and he not only got the tattoo done, but his sons when they were older had the same tattoo done by the same tattoo artist. We know this because they wrote home about it at the time. Both of them, including the Duke of York who was later to be King George the V were said to have even more tattoos, as they also had tattoos done while they were in Japan. This is because their father instructed their tutor to take them to the master tattoo artist Hori Chiyo while they were there. The truth is, many royal houses in Europe embraced tattoos. For a look at just how many, be sure to read this reproduction of an article from a magazine published in 1898 that names just who in the many royal houses of Europe had tattoos. You may be surprised.
Tattoos and Crime
Another area where tattoos began to surface in Europe in the 19th Century was for the identification of bodies. The most well known case was of a body found in Berlin in the 1850s that started a discussion of the use of tattoos to ID the dead. The publicity that surrounded this particular case created a storm of discussion on the use of tattoos for identification amongst the various law enforcement groups in Europe. Criminologists and forensic scientists soon were brought into the discussions with police officers and the talk continued throughout the century. A record of these discussions on why people got tattooed, what various tattoos could tell us about the person (such as their country of origin) and the various techniques employed for tattooing are still a valuable resource for tattoo historians today.
As you can see, the use of tattoos was much more widespread during the 19th Century then our fuzzy concept of “Victorian Europe” could possibly comprehend. Royalty had numerous tattoos, the underclass used them as a source of pride and many police experts looked upon tattoos as an identification device for unidentified bodies. All in all, it seems that there may well have been a fairly vast underground world of tattoo art during the 19th Century in Europe.
Holy See in Vatican Hosts Tattoo Conference
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This December saw one of the more unusual places to host a tattoo conference: at the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican. What was even more unusual was that it was organized by Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See along with a Christian arts association. The conference was called “Into the Skin: Identity, Symbols and History of Permanent Body Marks” and was actually conceived by Ambassador Mordechay Lewy despite the prohibition of tattooing in Judaism. In addition, the concept of a tattoo has a particularly painful association for most Jews because of the use of “death stamps” or the tattooed numbers for tracking Jews at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
This conference looked at centuries of tattooing and how tattooing has become a part of the development in cultural groups to identify themselves. They traced this development from the tattooed brides of ancient Egypt to the First Crusaders who had cross tattoos branded to show their divine support all the way to today’s New Zealand All Black’s rugby team players who have Maori tattoos as part of their identity.
The conference is the first of its kind and was just a stone’s throw away, if you are a really good stone thrower, from St. Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican’s Pontifical Urbaniana University. A scholarly study of the history of tattoo, it drew participants from such lofty places as Oxford University, University of Poitiers in France and the curator of the Pacific Culture Museum of New Zealand. The two day conference discussed historical tattoos, and even the current role of the commercialization of tattoos in present day pop culture.
The History of Tattoo Guns
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Rotary Tattoo Machine
The art of tattooing maybe as old as man himself but the tools that one used for the coveted art, evolved rapidly as civilizations developed. The ancient peoples of the world have been found to use bone (yikes!), wood, teeth and brass implements to insert ink into the skin. Today (thankfully) we use more sophisticated tattoo machines for the process which are often referred to as “iron” in the professional circles and “gun” in the more casual, amateur circles.
It all began when Thomas Alva Edison (the man credited with inventions such as the phonograph and the motion picture camera) invented the electric pen in the year 1876. The electric pen, which was titled Stencil-Pen was more or less a by product of the research that he did for his telegraphy machine. When Edison noticed that his telegraph machine left an ink mark underneath the paper it punctured, it gave him the idea to use perforated sheets for making copies of documents.
Thus Edison went on to invent the electric pen (a puncturing device) which subsequently became the inspiration for Samuel O’Reilly’s first ever tattoo machine patent. In 1891 Samuel modified Edison’s invention to introduce ink into the human skin. At the same time, another inventor by the name Thomas Riley (in London, UK) filed a patent for his tattoo machine which was based on the model of a doorbell. While Samuel’s tattoo machine was based on Edison’s rotary technology, Thomas’ machine used the electromagnet technology, which is what modern machines use.
Two-Coil Tattoo Machine
However, Thomas’ machine used just a single coil while most machines today use the two coil configuration. This modified modern version was first patented by Alfred Charles South (also in London, UK.)
Thanks to modern technology that the process of getting a tattoo has become relatively pain free (if you don’t believe me try getting a tattoo from a jagged piece of bone!) Not only that, a great many hygiene related issues associated with ancient methods is also avoided, making the process relatively safe. With modern technology a tattoo artist can also control other factors such as depth (of the puncture), speed and force of application allowing tattoos to develop into a precise and predictable art form.
Ancient Marks: The Sacred Origins of Tattoos and Body Marking by Chris Rainier
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Chris Rainer, one of the world’s chief documentary photographers, specializes in documenting the indigenous cultures of the world. His photographs and books are exhibited and collected all over the world; his work has been seen in some of the most popular publications of today like Time, Life, National Geographic publications, International Red Cross, The United Nations, and Amnesty International to name a few. He has even won numerous awards for his mastery of photography. Rainer in his book ‘Ancient Marks: The Sacred Origins of Tattoos and Body Marking,’ traces the traditions of tattoos and scars throughout the world, including our modern western culture.
Here’s a brief description of the book from the publisher:
“Seven years, seven continents, and thirty countries, from the African savannah to the barrios of Los Angeles, from New Zealand to Egypt, and Brazil to Burkina Faso, Chris Rainier documented the traditions of tattooing, scarification, piercing, and other forms of body altering art, the origins of which date back to the dawn of humankind.
Ancient Marks reveals not only the haunting beauty of these often mystical forms, but also connects them to humanity’s enduring efforts to tell stories, forge identity, and create links to the divine. “The human form became, through the brillance of inspired artistry, a sacred geography of the soul, a map of culture and myth expressed by forms painted, carved, or incised upon the canvas of the body” — Wade Davis.”
Here’s what Wade Davis – An anthropologist, photographer and author of the 1985 best-selling book titled ‘The Serpent and the Rainbow’ – says about the book. (This excerpt is from the book’s foreword):
“If the skin of the average human body was laid flat as a map, a sheet of parchment, it would spread over twenty square feet.
But throughout history and for the vast majority of the artists of the world the body has always been the template of the spirit, the palette upon which all dreams and possibilities may be realized and expressed.
The human form, whether isolated in the forests of the Amazon, swept clean by the bitter winds of the Arctic, or soothed by sunset rains of Polynesia became through the brilliance of inspired artistry a map of culture and myth, a sacred geography of the soul, all expressed by the simplicity of forms painted, carved, incised, or etched upon the canvas of the body.
To contemplate the images in this book, whether the living faces of Polynesia, the raised flesh of Africa, or the erotic tensions of reinvention celebrated at Burning Man, the millenarian gathering that blossoms each year from the deserts of Nevada, is to remember why all peoples through all time have in the end found ways, whatever the impediments, to seek and celebrate a transformation of the spirit.”
History of Tattoo Machines
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The predecessor to our modern tattoo machine, interestingly enough, is the electric pen. Also known as stencil-pens, the electric pen was invented by Thomas Alva Edison (the American inventor credited with the invention of the electric light bulb) in 1876. When Edison noticed that the stylus of their printing telegraph machine actually created tiny punctures in the paper and also left a mark of the chemical solution underneath it, he got the idea to use perforated sheets of paper as a stencil for duplicating drawings and hand written documents.
Subsequently, in the year 1891, Samuel O’Reilly found out that Edison’s electric pen (with a few modifications) can also be used to insert ink into the skin. He later introduced a system to provide an ink reservoir by adding a tube and a needle and thus the very first patent for a tattoo machine was born.
Today’s modern tattoo machine however is vastly different from O’Reilly’s machine which used Edison’s rotary technology. Contemporary machines use electromagnets – A type of magnet in which a magnetic field is produced by the flow of electric current. This type of machine was first patented by Thomas Riley and it so happened, that Thomas filed the patent for his machine just twenty days after Samuel O’ Reilly had filed his patent.
Thomas Riley’s inspiration for the tattoo machine however came from elsewhere. For Thomas, his idea surprisingly enough, came from a door bell! He used Danish Inventor Hans Christian Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism and placed a modified assembly of a door bell inside a box made of brass. This mechanism is the basis for today’s tattoo machines.
Thomas’ machine however only used a single coil to produce electromagnetic fields, unlike contemporary machines. Alfred Charles South later added another coil to the machine and that became the first patent for our modern two coil machine. However, there are still some machines today that use the Edison’s Rotary technology.
There are many different types of tattoo machines in use now – Linear, Shader and Color are some of the most commonly used types. Each of these is used for a different purpose as is evident from their names. Linear machines are used to lay the ink in one single pass, in order to create a prominent line. The Shader machine is used to shade black (or various shades of black) in order to add depth to the tattoo. And the Color machine is used to blend or add colors to the tattoo.