See how one artist creates flower tattoos with a delicate, subtle design aesthetic, while another uses bolder, darker linework to deliver a completely different take on a floral tattoo. Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration.There are endless ways to see what other artists and designers are doing and how those custom designs translate onto skin. “I look to art books and social media for inspiration,” Salazar explains. Schiffmacher says he appreciates the simple designs of mid-20th century tattoos.Deciding what tattoo style you want to pursue with your work can be aided by research. Taschen is selling 10,000 numbered copies of the first edition of the 440-page hardcover book for $175. “When we started, we worked with about 400 tattoo artists in the whole world,” he tells BBC News’ Lucy Hocking. Over the course of his career, he has watched tattooing become increasingly mainstream in Europe and globally. Schiffmacher has personally tattooed such celebrities as Kurt Cobain and Lady Gaga. By the turn of the 20th century, tattoos adorned not just convicts and sailors, but members of the royal family and respected professionals. But as Robert Shoemaker and Zoe Alker wrote for the Conversationin 2019, tattooing became increasingly acceptable in England as early as the Victorian era. In Europe and the United States, many people have historically viewed tattoos as disreputable.

As David Carrier reports for Hyperallergic, the images range from sacred Thai tattoos designed to protect people from accidents to a portrait of the heavily tattooed American artist Milton Zeis by fellow 20th-century tattoo artist Ralph Johnstone. Other chapters of the book focus on the tattooing traditions of Japan, Europe and America. 'Homeward Bound' tattoo design by American tattoo artist Bert Grimm, ca. “Whether it’s a dragon in the old Japanese style, or a tattoo of Florence Nightingale, or ‘Homeward Bound’ on a sailor during World War II, the images-as well as the tattooed people-have their own histories.”Ĭharlie Wagner (center) with a 'tattooed lady' and American sailor, ca. “This whole collection is a monument to the old world of tattooing that I fell in love with when I first started out,” writes the artist in the book’s opening pages. Schiffmacher describes traveling to the region to be tattooed by artists who used a traditional technique employing chisels and mallets. Despite colonial efforts to suppress the practice, Indigenous people have kept it alive for centuries. The text begins with the Māori of New Zealand, whose intricate, black-ink facial tattoos convey social rank, ancestry, knowledge and skills, as well as related traditions from Samoa, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere in the South Pacific. That collection forms the basis for the book, which is divided into several sections tracing tattooing traditions. Henk Schiffmacher's Private Collection: 1730s-1970s: Henk Schiffmacher's Private Collection of the Art and Its MakersĪn overview of more than two centuries of tattoo history intermixed with an intimate look at the lives of tattoo artists Buy “So I would use it to buy tattoo memorabilia and put this in a collection so it could be preserved and made visible and accessible to the public.” “When I started to make money from tattoos and from conventions, I felt like I couldn’t use this money for myself and that it belonged to the tattoo community,” he says to Vice. Schiffmacher soon started creating tattoos himself, initially using his own body as a canvas. “I fell in love with these tattooed people whose tattoos were so open and honest.” “I liked that she befriended and even lived with the people she took photos of, who were all types of people including circus people and tattoo people,” he tells Vice. Hand-colored photograph of a tattooed Japanese messenger, by Italian-British photographer Felice “Felix” Beato, ca. 1900sĬourtesy of the Schiffmacher Tattoo Heritage Portrait of a Māori woman with chin moko, ca. Inspired by American photographer Diane Arbus, he documented the lives of sailors and others who frequented the city’s tattoo parlors.

Schiffmacher moved to Amsterdam in the 1970s-a time he describes in the book as the start of the Western renaissance of tattooing. Henk Schiffmacher’s Private Collection, published by art book company Taschen, contains more than 700 images of tattoos and the people who got them, as well as Schiffmacher’s memories from his decades as an acclaimed tattoo artist. Now, a new book by Amsterdam tattoo artist Henk Schiffmacher showcases the ways in which people marked their bodies with ink between the 18th and 20th centuries, as seen through the lens of the author’s collection of photographs and designs.

Throughout history, humans have used tattoos to protect against witchcraft and bullets, claim membership in gangs, honor loved ones, or simply decorate themselves.

Sketch book tattoos