WonderLand: vintage tattoos

Showing posts with label vintage tattoos. Show all posts

Japanese Tattoo Women

1946, Tokyo, Japan

1937

1955

1940s

1946

source selvedgeyard, dailymail, flickr

Vintage Tattoos

Doc Forbes and Bunny, Vancouver, Canada, 1960s

Pam Nash, Bristol, 1950s

Unkown Tattooed Female; Australia, circa 1960s

Robert Doisneau

Coco, Jean-Marie, l'Amiral, Paris, 1952

1952

Le Velo du Printemps, 1948

Accordionist playing in a bistro near Les Halles, ca. 1950

Backstage Concert Mayol, 1952

Backstage Concert Mayol, 1953

Contest Of The Most Beautiful Tattoo, Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1950

Architecture, ca. 1970

Lido, 1969

French Cancan at Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1955

Mademoiselle Vivin greets, 1953

Backstage Concert Mayol, 1953

Youki Desnos showing her tatoo mermaid, ca. 1950

La Réussite, 1952

1940

Rue Guérin Boisseau, 1952

Stuff That Was Way Cooler in the Old Days

Back in the day Copenhagen was the tattoo capital of Scandinavia. In the wee-early 19th century newly-laid-drunk-out-of-their-minds sailors would let usually just as drunk Danish tattooists add an eagle or an anchor to whatever ink-entourage they had begun assembling through ports in New York, Hamburg, the far east, and so on. Though Nyhavn 17, the world's longest-running tattoo parlor, is still around, today the world of needled ink appears rather blah when put up against its former glory. Watching those terrible Ink shows it seems like 9 out of 10 customers come in asking for a fucking picture of their dead pet? Hail Mary, you miserable, boring doinks--no wonder your “almost human” canary punched its ticket. To sum it up, tattoos are just another item on the everything-list entitled “Stuff That Was Way Cooler in the Old Days.” Recently Jon Nordstrøm sent us his beautiful book, Danish Tattooing, which proves this sad truth. The book covers more than a century, but the ones we’re showing here are from the 60s-- before silly bikers, former pet-owners, and advertising executives ballsed it all up. Enjoy.

Ink-Hans is Denmark’s first professional tattoo-artist. He starts out in Nyhavn 17 around the turn of the century and in 1902 he has a local blacksmith make a machine for him based solely on a description from a foreign customer.

Tattoo-Jack operated under financial supervision of his wife but still managed to sneak some money past her, which he used to pay off the prostitutes he got down with in the backroom.

Behold, the coolest monarch ever, Danish King Frederik the 9th sporting his ink as featured in Life magazine in 1951.

Ole the tattooist. His self-manufactured machines are among today’s most expensive tattoo-collector’s items. He won the unofficial tattoo world championship in ’82 and died six years later.

Tattoo-John aka John Bimbo-Banger got a lot of attention when he started doing tit-tats on 16-year-old girls. He drank two bottle of whiskeys daily and was always drunk, resulting in mishaps like double-beaked eagle-tattoos and eventually his death in ’82.

Tattoo-Peter – here seen inking up a peter – was another notorious drunk who spent the early part of his career running his joint as a brothel/tattoo parlor-combo. He died in ’72, sitting in his tattoo-chair, but no one noticed till two days later.

Tattoo-Jim sitting in his Århus shop, regarded as Denmark’s most beautiful tattoo parlor at the time. He claimed to be able to remove tattoos and traveled around doing just that, always skipping town before customers realized it’s utterly bogus.

Images and text by vice.com