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Origin / Traditional Tribal

BODY ART
Just as occurred in other cultures with tattoo traditions, when Pagan tribes were converted to the Christian religion, their spiritual and cultural rites (which included tattooing, piercing and scarification) were outlawed. This banishment of body art stems from a passage in the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:28, which states "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you." How these decree against mutilating yourself in memory of the dead was interpreted to include all tattoos in any body's guess.

As the period of the crusades gave way to the Inquisition, it became a serious offense to have tattoos because it meant the wearer had been involved in another religion. While these and other body modifications continued to be practiced underground as a way for non-Christian people to identify each other, God forbid you got caught and your mark was revealed. According to Senior Torquemada and his cohorts of the Spanish Inquisition, God did forbid it.

Tattoos remained an archaic taboo until their reintroduction to the western world in the late eighteenth century by way of a British exploration to chart "undiscovered" lands. The sailors that traveled the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were responsible for the resurgence of tattoos in European cultures. Seamen returned from exotic travels with stories of abduction and forced tattooing. In the early 1800s, it was a fad among the European upper classes to get tiny tattoos as a way to vicariously live a small bit of the wild stories these men would tell - even though the veracity of these tales is highly questionable.

The custom of sailors and all branches of servicemen getting tattooed continued to this day. Traditional seafaring tattoos are still around, and have roots that go back more than a hundred years. Seamen are commonly known as superstitious folk. Many of the "sailor" tattoos still seen today have roots in seafarer's mysticism. Those tattoos were for protection, remembrance or to symbolize a voyage. A rooster tattooed on one foot and a pig tattooed on the other was believed to prevent a man from drowning. "Swallows", still a common tattoo symbol served to help a sailor navigate the sea and make sure he made it home. They also served as markers for time spent traveling. Other traditional symbols indicated the sailor had crossed the equator (Neptune/Poseidon, Greco-Roman god of the sea) or the international dateline (a dragon). Also, tattoos were a good way to recognize a person who may have died an ugly death in battle. Having this indelible mark meant that your body could be identified and sent home.

During the First and Second World Wars, different branches of the military adopted the sailor's tradition of tattooing as a means of mystical protection, a souvenir or remembrance, or just to show what bad asses they were. Slowly, tattooing began to emerge from the underground. People started to recognize its artistic merit and folk-art roots and to see that skin could be worn by more than just convicts, sailors and carnival people. Its exotic and erotic qualities appealed to a generation obsessed with liberating their bodies and their minds, as well as rejecting all things conventional and "square".

With the arrival of tattoo magazines and annual conventions, Body Art began reaching millions of people who would have never before considered it a legitimate means of expression. In 1989, Re/Search Publications put out a book called "Modern Primitives", which introduced the world to a California man who calls himself Fakir Musafar. Musafar has been exploring and documenting body adornments and rituals since his youth. His personal history includes piercing, tattooing, suspension by hooks, neck stretching, waist cinching and scarification - virtually any form of body modification known to humankind.

The influence of Musafar's exploration of other cultures' body adornments, plus the influence of such movie figures as the futuristic savages in Mad max and the bio-mechanical hybrids in Hellraiser and the Alien movies, turned "Modern Primitives" into a full-blown movement. It incorporates past traditions of many cultures, current social and political concerns and futuristic visions of the human race.

TRADITIONAL
What we call Traditional is actually Western Traditional - since there are many tattoo traditions all over the world. Characterized by fat black lines and bright blocks of color, the Traditional Motto is "If it's bold, it'll hold", meaning it will still be well-defined and visible 20 or 30 years from now.

Western Traditional started with service men, particularly sailors, who wanted permanent mementos of the exotic locales they had visited (hula girls, parrots, panthers), symbols of their military vocation (anchors, screaming eagles, sailing ships), a reminder of home ("Mom", pin-up girls) or mystical protection (horseshoes, crosses). Every port town was set up to accommodate service men with cheap entertainment, bars, flophouses and tattoo parlors. It wasn't uncommon for a successful sea-side parlor to have anxious servicemen lined up from noon till 3 or 4 in the morning, waiting for their turn in the chair. The thick outlines, simple coloring and "flash" designs of Traditional work made them quick and easy to do - thus increasing profits.

Neo Traditional
As modern Western Tattooing evolved and the intricate artistry of Fineline took hold of the industry, the simplistic Traditional style was put on the black burner. In the last decade, as a lot of earlier Fineline experimentation slowly turned to mush, the straightforward approach of Traditional has experienced a revival. Younger artists have returned to the classic form, throwing a modern spin on it... call it Neo-Traditional.

Japanese Traditional
Colorful and intricate, using limited motifs based on old wood block prints, a Japanese Traditional Tattoo is a single design which covers a large area... there's no such thing as a small Japanese Traditional piece. The tattoo is carefully planned out to compliment the musculature of the wearer's body. Because the work is so big and complex, it can take years to complete. The Traditional IREZUMI (tattooing) method involves laying the ink by hand. The tattooist (all Japanese tattooist are called "Hori"-something) uses a stick with needles attached to the end of it to slowly punch the ink into the skin. Today, most Horishi use electric tattooing machines, although some will return to the hand-poke method form intricate work.

Western Tattooist often extract individual design elements from a large irezumi piece to create a smaller tattoo, or tattoo new design motifs in the Japanese style. These hybridizations are not, in the sense, Japanese Traditional. Still, the underlying principles of Japanese tattooing have been extremely influential on modern Western inkslinging. Designing large, planned out work (instead of small, "flash" pieces randomly placed all over the body) and acknowledging the wearer's body structure to create a truly customized tattoo, are inkslinging fundamentals culled from Traditional Japanese Irezumi.

The Japanese way of working involves repeating the same codified designs over and over on different clients. The Japanese Tattooist selects the design the client is going to wear.

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