The Other End of the Needle

Continuity and Change among Tattoo Workers

David C. Lane

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781978807471, 9781978807488
• eBook ISBN: 9781978807495
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

The Other End of the Needle demonstrates that tattooing is more complex than simply the tattoos that people wear. Using qualitative data and an accessible writing style, sociologist Dave Lane explains the complexity of tattoo work as a type of social activity. His central argument is that tattooing is a social world, where people must be socialized, manage a system of stratification, create spaces conducive for labor, develop sets of beliefs and values, struggle to retain control over their tools, and contend with changes that in turn affect their labor. Earlier research has examined tattoos and their meanings.Yet, Lane notes, prior research has focused almost exclusively on the tattoos—the outcome of an intricate social process—and have ignored the significance of tattoo workers themselves. "Tattooists," as Lane dubs them, make decisions, but they work within a social world that constrains and shapes the outcome of their labor—the tattoo. The goal of this book is to help readers understand the world of tattoo work as an intricate and nuanced form of work. Lane ultimately asks new questions about the social processes occurring prior to the tattoo's existence.

1

The Social World of Tattooing

There are no such ultimate maxims when discussing culture. Culture is as vast as people; you can never give only one answer.

—Horiyoshi III

Horiyoshi III is arguably one of the most revered tattooists in the world. He has mastered the creation of materials and the technical skill needed to tattoo. In his mid-20s, he finished an apprenticeship under the tutelage of Shodai Horiyoshi.1 Horiyoshi III specializes in producing exquisite full-body suits that are sought after and admired by tattoo collectors around the globe. He holds a special position atop the world of tattooing, a position few tattooists ever occupy. Tattooists, tattoo collectors, and the public view him as a master or living legend.

Horiyoshi III did not simply happen to land atop this world as a genius or maestro of tattooing. Instead, he had to navigate the complex social world of tattooing. Someone like him has worked within specific conditions that have provided him opportunities to earn these honors. It is easy to imagine that any tattooist, even Horiyoshi III, works in isolation—in a dark, dingy cavernous space—managing their career. However, he is merely standing on the shoulders of giants, who provided him with expert training, an understanding of art and literature, a body of knowledge, and different opportunities. Navigating this world requires interaction with many other people, and Horiyoshi III was able to do so in a way that was different from other tattooists.

Horiyoshi III’s tattoos are evidence of his reliance upon others. For him to produce a tattoo, he needs pigments, paper, pens, visual sources, needles, gloves, machines, ink cups, a clean space to work, and so on. He had to learn from others how to effectively use these materials to produce the desired effects. To facilitate this work, Horiyoshi III has several apprentices who ensure all the necessary materials and tools are available for him. A client funds the endeavor and provides their skin for a duration of time.2 Horiyoshi III also needs an audience to define his tattoos as masterful works. Publishers (magazines and books—and increasingly, the internet) and the public judge and evaluate the outcome of his labor. While Horiyoshi III may tattoo by himself, he is situated in a network that facilitates the production and distribution of his work.

It is possible to learn much from examining masters like Horiyoshi III. However, they are outliers, as most tattooists never occupy this position. To understand the social organization of tattooing, it is more useful to incorporate a wider range of experiences. These would illustrate the cultural code, rules of the game, and stratified division of labor to reveal the complexity of tattoo work’s social organization. This chapter begins by explaining the historical transformation b how tattooing became a full-time occupation in the United States. It emphasizes the cultural elements that shape the contemporary organization of the craft. The chapter then shifts to the contemporary system of stratification among tattooists and how they orient themselves toward their work.

From Folkcraft to Occupation

Most likely, the first professional tattooist in the United States was Martin Hildebrandt, who began tattooing in 1846. He opened a shop in 1875 in New York City.3 Hildebrandt was probably not the first person to profit from selling this service. However, he was the first to settle into a shop, “what he called an atelier in [sic] Oak Street, between Oliver and James Streets, New York,” estimated to be 77 James Street in Lower Manhattan today.4 Prior to opening this shop, Hildebrandt tattooed as he traveled. He began his tattoo career in 1846 while working as a sailor and continued as a soldier with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. Both Northern and Southern troops welcomed him, as they coveted his tattoos.5

The significance of Hildebrandt’s story is on account of his hoboing around before opening a shop,6 which reveals the (lack of) organization among those producing tattoos in the late mid- to late 19th century in the United States.7 Like Hildebrandt, other producers of tattoos were sailors or laborers who tended to move from place to place to secure work. Sailors specifically had access to many materials and tools used to produce tattoos while aboard a ship.8 So tattooing had a folkcraft form of organization, in which there is no sense of commitment other than as a hobby. Little training was involved as many transferred the skills of other folkcrafts to tattooing.

Given the amount of downtime, condensed space, and lack of leisure activities aboard ships, it should be no surprise that sailors got creative by engaging in various folkcrafts. To illustrate, U.S. sailors produced embroidered blouses, engraved scrimshaw designs, and developed intricate drawings while aboard. These kinds of folk art tended to contain nautical imagery, sentimental messages for loved ones, depictions of professional ranks or affiliations, and patriotic symbols.9 In perhaps the best depiction of the continuity between these folkcrafts and tattooing, Matt Lodder claims, “The tools used to scratch tobacco tins, engrave love tokens and mend trousers—a needle and a piece of black cinder, charcoal, soot or even gunpowder for marking—are precisely the same set of implements needed to produce basic tattoo marks.”10 Sailors had access to sewing needles from their own sewing kits or the ship sailmaker, could process pigments from materials aboard the ship, encountered imagery to inspire their works, and most importantly, had access to people with skin and time. As a folkcraft, there is little evidence to indicate that a formal market, division of labor, or elaborate form of social organization occurred around tattooing aboard these ships. Instead, it was one of many maritime crafts.

Once Hildebrandt settled into a shop, it was not long before other tattooists began to follow suit. By 1876, Samuel O’Reilly opened in Chatham Square in New York City, just a few blocks north of Hildebrandt’s shop.11 By the 1880s, New York became the first city in the United States to have over one million residents, making it a splurging metropolis with many potential clients. Places like Chatham Square, and later the Bowery, had an influx of tattooists settling into shops in what were urban fun zones.12 More tattooists—Lewis “Lew-the-Jew” Alberts, Charlie Wagner, “Electric” Elmer Getchell, and Louis Morgan—settled into shops in the early 1900s.13 Between 1875 and 1925, shops opened in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, San Antonio, St. Louis, Boston, and New Orleans. Notice, most were port cities. Lenora Platt and August “Cap” Coleman settled in the city rumored among East Coast tattooists to be the greatest bounty of them all—Norfolk, Virginia, where there were plenty of sailors, including the U.S. Navy’s new Great White Fleet of battleships.14 By opening shops, tattooists changed their organization. For the first time, tattooing became a for-profit occupation.

As more tattooists opened shops they began to compete for customers.15 Working in close proximity to one another, they defended their business interests to keep clientele. For example, Lenora Platt and Cap Coleman, known as the king and queen of Norfolk, competed with “E. J. Miller, Andy Sturtz, Bill Grimshaw, and Elmer Getchell [who] were all scattered along Main Street.”16 Growing competition was such an issue that some even taught their wives how to tattoo as “a way to boost business without fear of losing them [as laborers] to competing shops.”17 In response to increased competition, they began to define who was, and who was not, a member of the occupation. The code of tattoo work began to emphasize who has earned the right to tattoo, and it valued a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic.

There were two innovations associated with this shift in organization. The first was the electric tattoo machine, patented by Samuel O’Reilly in 1891.18 Machines made tattoos more affordable, less painful, and quicker to produce; increasing their rate of diffusion and facilitating a more artistic style of tattooing in the United States and Europe.19 The second innovation was flash. Flash were predrawn designs that hung on the walls of tattoo shops or outside carnival tents. These designs enticed customers by showing what tattooists were (supposedly) capable of producing. It made the reproduction of specific images easier for tattooists, and it increased their control over clients.20 Tied to both innovations, skill hierarchies began to emerge among tattooists—a change in social organization.21

Prior to the electric tattoo machine, tattooists were largely responsible for producing their own tools and materials. They made hand tools by binding several needle points onto a short stick. To produce ink, tattooists mixed dried pigments with alcohol and water.22 Due to variation in materials and methods, it was difficult to compare the skill of tattooists to one another. Once people adopted them, machines became a piece of technology that tattooists could use to compare their skills and talents.23 A hierarchy and system of prestige enabled tattooists to rank themselves in relation to one another and claim expertise.24 Those who were considered to have the greatest ability to manipulate machines or who honorifically earned their place in the prestige hierarchy landed atop this world.

The tattoo machine also became a physical representation of the tattooists’ code. Tattooists operated independently and needed to be self-sufficient with a DIY ethic, but they were also interdependent, relying on one another for the exchange of knowledge and materials. Being a commercial art, tattooists often held onto their tricks of the trade to give them a competitive advantage in the market. For example, discussing tattoo machines, Pops, currently the owner and curator of a tattoo museum, claims, “Tattooists had to make their own repairs back then and really know the tricks of the trade just to keep up with the demand for tattoos. Some of those tricks are still used to this day.”25 These tricks of the trade are hard-fought and easily lost, something only to be passed on to trusted associates. This reflects the value for defining who honorifically earns the right to be in the know.

Machines represent a bundle of knowledge only shared with others who earn the right to possess it.26 Jake, a skilled machine producer and mentor of Kevin, a 34-year-old tattooist, decided it was time to teach Kevin about tattoo machines once he had grasped how to tattoo. Over several weeks, Jake began to teach Kevin the basics of machines and their mechanics. This occurred in a residential garage workshop. It included learning about the physics and geometry of machines and how those affect the way they run. The significance of this process is that Kevin honorifically earned the right to this knowledge, and it reveals the DIY social organization among tattooists.

While it is unknown when flash initially appeared, or when people first used the term, it certainly appeared sometime in the early 1900s. Its predecessors were sketchbooks and other handicrafts used by ship tattooists to advertise their skills.27 The sketchbooks carried by early tattooists and advertised in supply catalogs through the 1910s were easy to store and transport, and they are evidence that many were still working and traveling extensively.28 In contrast, flash were larger sheets of paper (usually 20″ × 15″ or 18″ × 24″), framed, and intended to be hung on the walls of tattoo shops.29 Like sketchbooks, these enticed customers into choosing designs. Being larger, they were more problematic for travel.

As more tattooists settled into shops, flash replaced sketchbooks. Flash designs provided consumers with available imagery to select for tattoos.30 Tattooists transferred the outlines of images on flash to the skin of clients via acetate etching, stencil, or tissue paper, providing an outline of the design.31 Over time, people exchanged or reproduced flash designs with minor variations.32 Occasionally, tattooists outright copied them off the bodies of tattoo wearers.33

Just like tattoo machines, people evaluated producers of flash based on a skill hierarchy. Louis Morgan, a San Francisco–based tattooist, describes differences between types of flash in the early 20th century: “Outlines of good designs can be had very cheaply by getting impressions of a good selection from a tattoo supplier. These outlines can easily be copied by making transfers for them or cutting stencils of them. Then the impression can be made on the drawing paper and the designs painted to suit the purchaser.”34 Morgan is suggesting there is a value for flash produced by more skilled tattooists. Those who were skilled were more likely to have their imagery distributed, reproduced, and copied by others. Flash created a degree of continuity in tattoo imagery.35 This is how the traditional American style of tattooing developed its genre boundaries.

Flash were also a collective solution to the problem of commercial uncertainty.36 It structured client choices by shaping the form and content of imagery. Folklore among tattooists exemplifies this problem of uncertainty and control. Kevin explained, “I remember one of the stories he [Jake] was telling me, there was days that he [Phil—Jake’s mentor], there’d be a roomful of people waiting for tattoos, like sailors, and today he would be like, ‘Today, I’m doing eagles, and if you’re not getting an eagle, get the fuck out.’ And he would just do eagles all day. And you would see people get up and leave ’cause they weren’t getting [did not want] an eagle that day.” There are many versions of this lore, but the general narrative is about limiting uncertainty to maximize profits. Once they possessed them, tattooists could replicate designs from flash, enabling them to operate with less input from clientele and merely make minor modifications to efficiently produce tattoos.

Additionally, a subset of tattooists largely controlled the production and distribution of flash. Morgan notes, “The best designs to have are those produced by professional tattooers, as they will make so much better showing and will soon pay for their cost by selling so much more often than the ones made by the beginner.”37 In Morgan’s depiction is evidence of skill hierarchy forming around the production of flash (not necessarily tattooing itself). Tattooists located known insiders to purchase from, with flash from the most reputable becoming the most sought after.38 The innovation of flash provided tattooists with a mechanism to regulate the market for their services and construct a skill hierarchy to evaluate different producers. In contemporary tattooing, there is now a prestige hierarchy among tattooists who collect flash from historical legends and masters. However, many contemporary tattooists—especially the artists—have moved away from the efficiency of flash in favor of one-of-a-kind designs.

While these material innovations facilitated the production of tattoos, they also demonstrate the occupation’s growing division of labor. They show the increasing sophistication and specialization among tattooists. The production and distribution of these innovations also reveals a growing cultural code among workers. This code emphasized a DIY ethic, a system of stratification, and the role of insiders or established tattooists who had access to specialized knowledge.

The Supply Company: Controlling the Means of Production

Even though tattooists value the DIY ethic, most do not have enough time to produce all the materials necessary to tattoo. Some tattooists and ex-tattooists specialize in producing and/or distributing these needed materials. For example, some fabricate tattoo machines, while others focus on mixing pigments to create inks. Those who distribute catalogs of these items are kn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Tattooing for Beginners
• Chapter 1. The Social World of Tattooing
• Chapter 2. Organizing Space
• Chapter 3. Careers of Tattooists
• Chapter 4. Legal Consciousness among Workers
• Chapter 5. Ties to Conventional Institutions and Ideas
• Chapter 6. Sources of Contention
• Chapter 7. External Threats and the Maintenance of Boundaries
• Conclusion: Continuity and Change
• Appendix A: Methodology
• Appendix B: Breakdown of Participants
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author