Old tattoo photos

[CultExciter]

@gougetheeyes, haha. I always thought he looked a little more like Mike Patton, what do you think @dcostello?

[Tight-Lines]

@gougetheeyes, haha. I always thought he looked a little more like Mike Patton, what do you think @dcostello?

Who's Mike Patton?

[CultExciter]

HAHAHAHA

[YOMONEY]

Tattoo Convention in the Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh Pa in the Mid 90's

Pittsburgh Hilton | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

this is awsome! although, all of those people look like theyre stuck in the 80s..

[MadeIndelible]

Tony Polito:

[kylegrey]

Charlie Wagner tattooing -

[Shannon Shirley]

very cool....

Charlie Wagner tattooing -

[Graeme]

Found this one of Tony D'Annessa on Getty Images. They say the photo is from 1955, but Tony started tattooing in 1958 so who knows exactly when the photo is from.

And one of Tony from the 4th of July this past year, posted by Dave Cummings on his instagram:

That also answers the question about what a tattoo will look like with a scar through it: hard as fucking nails.

[cibo]

i hate hearing the...just think how bad your tattoos will look in 20 years...

hows about a few thousand years?

more here :)

hopefully not a repost

Edited January 10, 2013 by cibo
double posted

[kylegrey]

Horiyoshi III

[Gregor]

Head over to Steven Wrigleys instagram (STEVENWRIGLEY) he's posting loads of old stuff which belonged to his dad etc pure history !!!!!

[rocketfish344]

very interesting photos! i'm trying to get a few by the end of the month

[kylegrey]

Edith Burchett , wife of George Burchett .

[MadeIndelible]

[YawkeyWay]

I really like this thread. Thank you for sharing the photos. I've been meaning to ask my wife's grandfather who/where he got his work done during the war. He was Navy and spent his entire time in the Pacific. My interest in traditional has me loving not only the look, but the history of the art.

[Graeme]

Here are all the photos printed in George Burchett's posthumously published book, Memoirs of a Tattooist. The book has been out of print for a long time--my copy was published in 1958 and there was an American paperback version published in, I think, 1961, and there have been no reprints of it to my knowledge--and it's very possibly even in the public domain at this point which is why I'm posting it. Admins, if this isn't okay please feel free to delete this post because while I think this is worth sharing, I don't want to step on anybody's toes here. Apologies for glare, shadows, etc.

[Erica]

"my most plucky client"

awesome

[MGblues]

@Graeme If only the photos were in color...

[Graeme]

@Graeme If only the photos were in color...

Black and white is fine with me but I wish there were pictures of flash or designs. It's a strange book in a lot of ways. There's an ad on the back of the book for a book called The Seven Deadly Sins of Hollywood that "deals with all aspects of the Hollywood way of life, from the obsessional interest in psychiatry to the obsessional cult of personal publicity" so I am assuming that the publisher, Oldbourne, mainly published sensationalist books, and the Burchett book is sort of along those lines. There's a lot of really cool stuff and stories in there, but you kind of get the impression that the book was published (it's also worth keeping in mind that the book was "compiled and edited" by Peter Leighton, based on notes Burchett had left behind in preparation for a memoir so what we're left with isn't necessarily what Burchett would have written himself) because it is sort of sensationalist and a curiosity. I was shocked to read Ed Hardy's introduction to the reissue of the Tattootime magazines where he mentions that prior to the publication of Tattootime that there had only been four books about tattooing published in English in the 20th century. There just wasn't the interest in preserving the history and traditions of tattooing prior to that, I guess.

[MadeIndelible]

I always wanted to pick up that book. Great photos.

Here's one that some of you will probably like:

[teddibease]

I always wanted to pick up that book. Great photos.

Here's one that some of you will probably like:

I know Rollins' backpiece wass done by Rick Spellman, but I was always really curious as to where he got his other tattoos.

[briankelly]

when i worked in dublin, a guy came in with these tattoos. got them done when he was 15 by Johnny Eagle. surprisingly, he is still with Karen. he wanted to cover them up with tribal, even though i was putting more polished traditional on his son. never saw him again.

[MadeIndelible]

Found this on Tumblr, but there were no tattooer credits.

Lady Viola, tattooed by Frank Graf in the 20s.

[kylegrey]

Japanese Tattooed Mail Runners -

Photos of 19th-Century Tattooed Japanese Mail Runners « TAM Blog

[Iwar]

I met an old Swedish sailor a month or so back that let me take a few pictures of his tattoos. All he could remember was that the top two were done in the US, and the bottom two in Sweden, all from different artists during the 50's. He seemed stoked that someone took an interest in them, and I could see him stare at his own arms as he walked away after our conversation.