You could spend the day or a few weeks with a builder and get secrets and tips while making your machine. Good builders would invite younger ones to come build and learn. When the old guys died a lot of families were embarrassed about the line of work and tons were thrown out, leaving a few for younger tattooers to scourge to find them. Machines from the old times are very valuable today. Some builders got famous and some were more obscure. There was a lot of friendly competition between tattooers. They would mail parts and write about the secret trick they had to make to make their machines better. Most machine builders have their own style or frame configuration. Tattooers would travel and visit each other and learn different ways to build machines. Q: Can you tell me about the significance of early tattoo machines and how the knowledge of building them was passed on and evolved through the years?Īt the time there was no significance to old tattoo machines they were simply a tool to make money. Now it’s on ebay and craigslist, too easy to get. When I was buying you had to track someone down, go to their shop or house and beg them to sell you things. If you have money, you can be a collector. To own historical tattoo pieces is like instant “cred” for anyone who has it. I want the younger tattooers to have those objects so they can feel like I did. Now it’s just more stuff and I’m selling and trading my collection for things I can actually use. It made me feel like I had a link to the past and it made me proud to have possession of the tools of the trade. Kind of like a bridge to the heroes of yesterday. I was fascinated with older tools and designs because they connected me to the old ways. Q: As a collector of your trade what drove you to save ephemera of the tattoo trade throughout your career? (Your perspective then and now). The Electric LadyLand banner made by, Ernie “Ernie the hat” Gosnell, of Annette La Rue’s former tattoo shop in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was seedy and frowned upon to have ink on your skin until the late 90’s into the 2000’s. Most tattooers traveled with the circus or went to busy Navy port towns. Americana tattooing was popular among sailors and circuses at the turn of the century. Q: As a Tattooer of 30 years can you tell me about the history of Americana Tattooing?Īmericana style tattooing means a bold colorful style consisting of bold thick outlines, solid black shading and bright solid colors. Annette La Rue and I doing conservation work, on a banner made by her friend, Ernie “Ernie the hat” Gosnell, of her former tattoo shop in New Orleans, Louisiana. Find her shop owned by her and her husband Steve Tiberi, also a tattooer and collector on Instagram and Image by Allison Termine. Our first interview is with Annette La Rue of Electromagnetic Tattoo, Chesapeake Virginia. With additional acetate stencil rubbing of a “Cap” Colemans’ drawing reworked by Sailor Jerry. Pictured is a Paul Rogers original tracing paper flash from “Sailor Eddies” Shop in Camden, New Jersey 1971. *To discover an in depth history of the origins of Americana Tattooing visit: A term that describes the importance of gathering material in the present time, which they have done throughout their career in the Tattoo Trade. These accidental archivists, interviewed are artists and collectors and are what I consider boots on the ground archivists. Such object items are the tattoo machines, drawings on fragile tracing paper, business cards, pictures, adapted furniture for the tattoo sitting, banners, and flash to name a few. Just like other collected historical archives, provenance of the Tattoo Trade is based on oral dissemination and the now primary objects that were used to apply the final product were secondary to them and therefore have become a nostalgic link to the past. It is a treat to interview two artists and collectors of the Tattoo Trade to learn of a niche subculture through its remnants / ephemera. Important historical artifacts of modern electric tattooing exist in various collections who are archivists in their own right. Knowledge of this trade was passed down orally by August “Cap” Coleman, 1884-1973 and Franklin Paul Rogers, 1905-1990, the for-father’s, what remains is tattoo ephemera and an oral tradition that lives on today through those they taught. The pioneering style in the trade of tattooing is called Americana.
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