How tattoos became mainstream
Despite their millennia-old origins, tattoos have frequently been considered “job-stoppers” – but it’s a stigma that has now lifted
Do tattoos have a long history?
Yes. The oldest found were on the mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman, who lived in the Alps about 5,300 years ago. He had about 60, mostly simple crosses and lines. Tattoos also make an appearance in the civilisations of ancient Egypt, Persia, China and Japan – though typically they were used as a way to brand slaves or criminals. It was in the Pacific islands of Polynesia (which gave us the word “tattoo”) that tattooing developed as an art. In ancient Polynesian society nearly everyone was tattooed: it was a way of indicating a person’s rank. And it was a heavily tattooed Polynesian called Omai who fueled the craze for tattoos in the West. The first South Pacific islander to come to Britain, Omai disembarked here in 1774 off a ship returning from James Cook’s south Pacific expedition. He became the darling of London society and had his portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds.
And who took up the practice of tattooing?
Sailors – and lots of them. By the late 1800s, 90% of the British Navy had a tattoo, often to mark where they’d sailed: a turtle for crossing the equator; an anchor for the Atlantic. Tattoos also became popular in the US: in Herman Melville’s Moby-dick (1851), Ishmael shares a bed with a Polynesian harpooner covered head to toe in tattoos. They were widespread, too, among soldiers in the American Civil War, partly as a show of allegiance and partly as a means of posthumous identification. “Your stripes can get torn off in battle,” as tattoo historian Paul Roe puts it. “Tattoos can’t.” Their popularity also spread to prisoners, who developed their own code: a teardrop below the eye to show they’d killed someone; a cobweb to signify a long jail sentence.
Were tattoos in Britain confined to “the lower orders”?
No – they became popular among the upper classes, too, though in their case the main influence was not so much Polynesia as Japan, where the art of tattooing flourished during the Edo period (1603-1868). Drawing on the practice of woodblock printing, tattoo artists began to proliferate in the red-light districts of urban centres, and Japan’s famed tattoo style – with its motifs of colourful koi and cherry blossoms mingling with tigers and dragons – was born. The new art form became especially popular with the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) – which is one reason the authorities banned it – but it also won admiration in Victorian England where there was already a craze for japonaiserie. And according to tattoo historian Matt Lodder, it was largely the Royal Family that inspired the fashion for Japanese-style tattoos.
Which royals in particular?
Credit must mainly go to Prince George (later George V) and his brother Prince Albert, who were given tattoos – a dragon and a stork respectively – by Hori Chiyo, known as “the Shakespeare of tattooing”, when they visited Japan in 1881. (As a young man their father, the future
Edward VII, had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm). Nicholas II of Russia also went under the needle, before he became tsar. (And one member of the House of Lords, says Lodder, “had a full back tattoo of a fox hunt, with the fox escaping safely, rather theatrically, down its hole”.) When Sutherland Macdonald opened Britain’s first tattoo parlour in the late 19th century, on London’s Jermyn Street, his client list boasted dukes, maharajas and assorted European royals. In 1894, Macdonald convinced the Post Office Directory, the Yellow Pages of its time, to create a section for “tattooists”, and patented the country’s first electric tattoo machine.
Did the craze last?
No. By the mid-20th century, enthusiasm for tattoos had declined: tattooists were mainly backstreet operators often working with dirty needles; tattoo designs tended to be old-fashioned (Union Jacks and other patriotic icons); and tattoos themselves were socially taboo. But that changed in the 1990s, when prominent athletes, actors and other celebrities began sporting them, and tattoos – particularly after David Beckham had “Brooklyn” (the name of his firstborn) inked on his back in 1999 – started to become cool. Tattooists began producing more complex, intricately drawn images. Tattoo culture surfaced in reality TV shows ( Tattoo Nightmares, Best Ink) and magazines ( Skin Deep, Tattoo Master), and tattoos became socially acceptable. Inkings that couldn’t be hidden for an interview had long been known as “job-stoppers”, but today, when some 20% of Britons have a tattoo (rising to 30% of Britons aged 25-39), they are sported with pride. (Although in a recent survey, 78% of employers said they’d be “less likely” to hire someone with an inking on their face.) In fact, businesses are even getting in on the act: Anytime Fitness, a US gym chain, has somehow convinced around 4,000 of its staff and customers to be branded with the company’s logo.
And is being a tattoo artist a profitable business?
Not especially. An established artist can earn as much as £80,000 a year – the legendary Kat Von D, at High Voltage Tattoo in Los Angeles, is said to make more than $500 an hour – but the average salary in the UK is around £24,000. And the costs of setting up a business aren’t inconsiderable. The basic equipment alone – a pair of tattoo machines, needles, skin pens and so on – costs between £2,000 and £3,000. You don’t need formal training or an official qualification, but you do have to register with your local council for a tattoo, piercing and electrolysis licence. You should also be vaccinated against hepatitis. Tattooists usually serve an apprenticeship of one to three years (working unpaid to begin with), learning first of all to clean and sterilise the equipment (see box); another tedious but essential task is checking young customers’ IDS – it’s illegal to tattoo anyone under 18.