the wordsmith
sarah james
decades of tattooing
The practice of tattooing – the art of injecting ink under the first layer of skin to create a design – has been around since the final stages of the Stone Age. Evidence such as tattooed mummified skin and tattoo instruments have been found, dating back to this period.
Despite tattooing being an ostracized practice in the Western world for many decades, it is a practice which has formed a large part of cultures in China, New Zealand and Thailand for centuries. Here, it is regarded as a sacred art form, which can only be performed by certain people who have undergone years of traditional training. The earliest tattoo inks were made from carbon and ash and were deposited under the skin using sharpened shells and sticks.
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In the Western world, in the early 1900s, tattoos were usually only adorned by sailors, circus actors and criminals. They were generally the people your mother told you to avoid. People who were heavily tattooed were regarded as outcasts and many acted in European freak shows. The subject matter of these tattoos tended to be quite personal to the wearer and included a lot of nautical and religious themes.
Tattoo machines as we know them today did exist (they were invented in about 1904), but the majority of tattoos were still done with a stick-and-poke method, where an ink covered needle is used to manually puncture the skin. This means that tattoos must have taken a very long time to produce!
The 1930s saw the introduction of social security numbers in the USA. Many Americans chose to have their social security numbers tattooed on their arms, so as to not forget it. Imagine having your ID number tattooed on you! Professional tattoo artists – those who earned their income solely through producing tattoos, also arose in the 1930s.
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During the 1940s and onwards, patriotic tattoos emerged, due to the ongoing Second World War. It was in this era that a tattoo artist who came to be known as Sailor Jerry, created tattoo colour pigments. Up until this point, all tattoos had been done in black ink. He was also a pioneer in using single use needles, as well as an autoclave to sterilise his equipment.
Due to the rise of conservatism in the 1950s, there was a huge decline in the number of people receiving tattoos. However, by the 1970s, there was a renewed interest in tattooing and people began getting tattoo sleeves.
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A trend which began in the 1980s was Caucasian people getting tribal and Celtic tattoos. There has been a huge move away from this nowadays as it is seen to be cultural appropriation.
The 90s – the era in which I was born, brought about what has become known as the ‘tramp stamp’, a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman.
A general trend over the decades is that tattoos have become bigger and more visible, and are usually all done by professional tattoo artists, who have all trained for a number of years to become tattoo artists.
These days, there is a huge movement towards single needle tattoos which are far finer and more dainty than American Traditional tattoos, for example. There is also a move towards going back to stick-and-poke tattoos, often done by people who are not professionals.
Tattoos do still have a lot of stigma surrounding them, particularly if a person is heavily tattooed. However, it has become more commonplace nowadays for a number of people to have small, easily concealed tattoos.
Who knows what trends will gain popularity in the future?