Tattoo History - Europe

In 1991 the mummy of the Hauslabjoch, the Ötzi was found. This mummy proofs that ornaments were also already pricked under the skin in Europe during of the bronze age over 5.000 years ago. The most single colored lines developed from ritual reasons. The Celtic Pikts from Caledonia, todays Northern Scotland, also carried images in their skin. The crusaders also pricked crosses or similar emblems under the skin to ensure them a Christian funeral in the case of death. But back then the images in the skin only had the simple function of identification and nothing more. There are barely any credentials left in Europe of a distinctive form of body art.

The Europeans were obviously completely unable to imagine a different function for a tatau than for identification as a carney note from the year 1566 reveals. The woodcarving shows an Eskimo women with her baby child who were captured in Newfoundland by Sir Martin Frobisher and taken to Europe to be exhibited at fairs. About the scar like tattoo in the Eskimo women's face it says: "The signs she is wearing in her face are all blue. They were made by her husband so he can recognize her otherwise they would run around disordered like brute."

But the declining attitude of the Europeans was not far fetched. Artistic skin decoration was proscribed all over Europe since the 4th century. Ever since Constantine The Great forbid in 313 the facial marks of the slaves and convicts because they disfigured the image of god. In 787, after the Christian culture deluged Europe, it was Pope Hadrian I. who prohibited skin decoration of any kind on any part of the body completely because he associated it with superstition and paganism and his successors held up this prohibition.

The acceptation for skin art in Europe didn't grow before the return of world circumnavigator James Cook who introduced Omai, a tataued native from Tahiti, to the society of England. In the meantime sailors got tataued by the natives of the southern pacific with tribal motives. The natives later adapted to the design wishes of the sailors resulting in palm tree designs and images of women which were synonyms for the south seas. For their work the natives were paid with knives, mirrors and needles. Some sailors even quit their service and settled on the south seas islands. The Frenchmen Jean Baptiste Cabri was the first European ever to decorate his whole body with tataus. After his return he was also the first European ever to display himself for an admission fee at fairs miming the savage.

The drive to emulate, boredom and the wish to belong to a particular group the custom of tatauing also spread among the common people. Therefore some sailors learned the art of tatauing, which mutated to "tattoo" through Anglicisms, from the natives and practiced it themselves from then on. They were the ones corresponding with the wishes of the sailors. The tribal symbols of the Polynesians were tied with the design wishes of the Europeans to a symbolic language which today is called Traditional Tattoo: crossed swords, cannons, banners, dates, hearts with initials, roses and snakes. Aside those mere emblems the first figurative designs appeared in 1814. They were small soldiers or faces and later on pin ups. True masters of maritime motives were the british tattoo artists Sutherland MacDonald and Tom Riley. Sailors were disposed like on an assembly line. 15 minutes a customer and not more.

According to records from the beginning of the 19th century the French were the masters of tattooing right after the brits although almost no French tattoo artist had his own studio yet. This had to do with restrictions of the part of the authorities who prohibited tattooing in the French army and navy but barely anybody minded those restrictions. During the 1830s, French tattooists were waiting in bars of the seaports Toulouse and Brest. In Copenhagen on the other hand Tattoo Jack, called The Sailor, already had a parlor close to the harbor arranged in a basement underneath the Cafe Texas. Tattoos were also very popular in the Turkish navy. The author Theopile Gautier (1811 - 1872) wrote an article in a magazine called Constantinople: "...almost all sailors had tattooed their arms and legs in blue or red... The first I saw, on those arms with abounded veins and athletic muscles, was the talisman like "Machíallah" which in the orient protects from the evil gaze and in addition I saw flaming hearts gored by an arrow. Very much the same as the ones on French drummer or on the letter of a cook in love. There also were passages from the Koran, god fearing mementos of a pilgrimage to Mecca interspersed with flowers and branches, anchors, steamboats with their wheels and smoke in shape of a corkscrew."

The European motive selection adept important impulses when Japan opened itself up to the west in the middle of the 19th century. The appearances and creatures descending from the Suikods changed the human body, with a variety of small and different motives, to an in it self closed, extensive canvas. With stories from the "New World", from authors like Karl May and Fenimoore Cooper, Indian tattoos moved into the skins of the Europeans. In the 1920s, 30s and 40s George Burchett, who created The Great Omi, picked up the influences of the americans and merged the maritime western motives with asian ones. It was people like the brit Ron Ackers or Netherlands Albert Cornelissen, the prototypes of the European tattoo artist, who travelled through Europe in caravans and tattooed with mobile equipment wherever tattoos were scarce articles. Les Skuses and Cash Cooper from Great Britian, Ole Hansen from Norway or Herbert Hoffmann and Christian Warlich from Germany were considered the first stars in the early European tattoo scene during the 1950s and 60s.

At the end of the 20th century the presents of tattoo master from the United States was almost bone crushing. But in the meantime the seed sprouts again in Europe. The expressionistic Fun Generation had their origins in Europe and created a medium for young tattoo masters.

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