TATTOO HISTORY
Explaining the evolution of tattooing from ancient cultures to modern professional studios.
Today, professional tattoo studios combine traditional artistry with modern safety standards and equipment.
Studios like Sin on Skin Tattoo Studio in Halifax continue this long tradition of tattoo craftsmanship. For more tips and professional advice, visit our complete Halifax Tattoo Guide.
Studios like Sin on Skin Tattoo Studio in Halifax continue this long tradition of tattoo craftsmanship. For more tips and professional advice, visit our complete Halifax Tattoo Guide.
Origins of Tattooing:
The tattoo (which comes from the Tahitian word tatu, meaning "to mark something") has been around since 12,000 BC, but its purpose varies from culture to culture. In 1992, a 4,000-year-old body of a man with tattoos was found in a glacier in Austria. In ancient Egypt, a tattoo was considered a sign of nobility or fertility, and the marks have been found on Egyptian mummies dating from 2000 B.C. Believed by many ancient peoples to provide magical protection against bad luck or disease, tattoos were used to identify rank, social position, or group membership in a variety of cultures, including the Greeks, Gauls, Thracians, and ancient Britons and Germans.
Tattooing among the native populations in the Americas was widely practiced; many Indian tribes tattooed their face and/or their body. While some groups simply pricked the skin with black dyes, some tribes used color to fill in skin scratches. Among the tribes of Micronesia, Malaysia, and Polynesia, natives pricked their skin with a special pronged implement and tapped in special pigment. The Maori of New Zealand are known for making complex, curved designs in the face with a stone instrument. Eskimos and many tribes of the Arctic and subarctic tattooed their bodies by puncturing the skin with a needle.
Today, tattoos are becoming less taboo and more accepted. As they become more mainstream, more professional shops open up, and the Artistic boundaries are pushed with the medium of tattoo art. Also, the advances in color and other tattoo equipment have made tattoos more than just a symbol or a testimony, but a real piece of art on skin.
Besides being a way to express yourself, tattooing can have more practical applications, such as:
- In Roman times, tattoos were the mark of slaves and criminals, but the dawning of Christianity brought the practice into disrepute, and tattooing was forbidden in Europe. Every culture since has tattooed itself in one form or another, for reasons of spirituality, protection, strength, and history.
- Tattoos have always had an important role in ritual and tradition. You can see this in Borneo, where women tattooed symbols on their forearms to indicate a particular skill. If a woman wore a symbol indicating she was a skilled weaver, her marriageability status rose. Tattoos around the wrist and fingers were believed to ward off illness/spirits.
- Tattooing made a comeback in England and Europe in the 19th century, when tattooing became popular among royal families of the late 1800s. In fact, the mother of Winston Churchill, Lady Randolph Churchill, had a tattoo of a snake on her wrist.
Tattooing among the native populations in the Americas was widely practiced; many Indian tribes tattooed their face and/or their body. While some groups simply pricked the skin with black dyes, some tribes used color to fill in skin scratches. Among the tribes of Micronesia, Malaysia, and Polynesia, natives pricked their skin with a special pronged implement and tapped in special pigment. The Maori of New Zealand are known for making complex, curved designs in the face with a stone instrument. Eskimos and many tribes of the Arctic and subarctic tattooed their bodies by puncturing the skin with a needle.
Today, tattoos are becoming less taboo and more accepted. As they become more mainstream, more professional shops open up, and the Artistic boundaries are pushed with the medium of tattoo art. Also, the advances in color and other tattoo equipment have made tattoos more than just a symbol or a testimony, but a real piece of art on skin.
- The first electric tattoo device was patented in the United States in 1891, and soon this country became well known for tattoo designs. American and European sailors flocked to tattoo parlours in port cities all over the world. At the same time, tattoos were often used to identify criminals and army deserters; later, prisoners in Siberia and Nazi concentration camps were given tattoos.
- During most of the 20th century, tattoos had an unsavoury reputation largely associated with motorcycle and street gangs, criminals, and military personnel. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, tattooing became more mainstream. The current popularity of tattooing and body piercing has also brought on an increase in potentially hazardous conditions. There are no regulations regarding tattooing, and neither the procedures nor the pigments used in the process are regulated.
Besides being a way to express yourself, tattooing can have more practical applications, such as:
- Covering hemangiomas (pink/red skin lesions also known as port wine stains)
- Color changes in the lips after facial surgery
- Masking the mottled-skin appearance of vitiligo
- Tattooing can also be used to apply "permanent make-up". However, the iron oxide sometimes used for this purpose can cause injury if you later undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Tribal Tattoos and Their Meanings
“Tribal” means a lot more today than it did fifteen years ago. The definition hasn’t expanded any, but people are trying to throw more and more design and black work tattoos into the category of tribal, unsuccessfully. A solid black tattoo isn’t necessarily tribal, in fact, a tribal tattoo doesn’t need to be black at all. And any design isn’t tribal. Every tattoo design that is tattooed in black isn’t a tribal tattoo.
A tribal tattoo was a tattoo that actually designated what tribe you were in or your status in that tribe. Sometimes the design was different for men than women, sometimes only men got it at all. It could be different if you were married than single. The thing is, it meant something that you understood if you were a part of the tribe, of that culture. What we think of as tribal probably comes from a poorly imitated Maori or other tribal community’s symbolic social structure. We take designs from African tribes, Pacific Islander tribes, Hawaiian, etc., and we try to duplicate them on ourselves without any understanding of what it means, or the significance behind it.
Tribal tattoos were also combined with scarification in many cultures and tribes. This was because there weren’t needles in many areas of the world in order to place the ink nicely into the skin. The person getting the design would have incisions made into the skin, and ash or soot rubbed into the cuts. This healed leaving a stained black or gray scar, having both texture and color.
For face tattoos, one should research the Maori culture. They have a beautiful and delicate symmetry to their facial designs. The tribal designs of this and other cultures had something that we lost when trying to adapt it to meet our own beauty standards. These cultures choose designs that they thought would look best on the body, that spoke to them and complimented certain body types and areas of the body. Today, we find some tribal flash and place it wherever we have room to fit it, disregarding contours of the body. So the main lesson here is to understand what you're putting on your body and the significance it can have.
A tribal tattoo was a tattoo that actually designated what tribe you were in or your status in that tribe. Sometimes the design was different for men than women, sometimes only men got it at all. It could be different if you were married than single. The thing is, it meant something that you understood if you were a part of the tribe, of that culture. What we think of as tribal probably comes from a poorly imitated Maori or other tribal community’s symbolic social structure. We take designs from African tribes, Pacific Islander tribes, Hawaiian, etc., and we try to duplicate them on ourselves without any understanding of what it means, or the significance behind it.
Tribal tattoos were also combined with scarification in many cultures and tribes. This was because there weren’t needles in many areas of the world in order to place the ink nicely into the skin. The person getting the design would have incisions made into the skin, and ash or soot rubbed into the cuts. This healed leaving a stained black or gray scar, having both texture and color.
For face tattoos, one should research the Maori culture. They have a beautiful and delicate symmetry to their facial designs. The tribal designs of this and other cultures had something that we lost when trying to adapt it to meet our own beauty standards. These cultures choose designs that they thought would look best on the body, that spoke to them and complimented certain body types and areas of the body. Today, we find some tribal flash and place it wherever we have room to fit it, disregarding contours of the body. So the main lesson here is to understand what you're putting on your body and the significance it can have.
Traditional Tattoo Methods and Ancient Tattoo Tools
A tattoo machine consists of a small handheld machine, needle, and tube. This machine in then connected to a power unit that provides pressure to move the needles. The needles may be of different sizes and shapes and are bundled together on a needle bar in different patterns depending on the requirements of the artwork. The unit is attached to a power supply that is activated by depressing a foot pedal on the floor beside the workstation. When the pedal is depressed the tattoo needle bar moves up and down very quickly like the needle on a tiny sewing machine. It penetrates the skin to inject the dye 3,000 times per minute.
Tiny bronze Egyptian tattoo needles and Maori Bone chisel.
Photo Source Left: Smithsonian Magazine Photo Source Right: PEM
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The needles to the left: were discovered at an Egyptian dig, dating back to 1450 B.C. but the oldest on record are from before 3000 B.C. The Maori of New Zealand used bone chisels to carve designs straight into the flesh of the warrior, right side. With the invention of needles during the Iron Age, tattooing quickly adapted to this new equipment. |
Polynesian tattoos required two people. The artist used a rake-like tool to hold the ink and a hammer to puncture the skin. The assistant would hold the skin taut so the vibrations wouldn’t affect the design. Before the tattoo machine was invented or even a thought, ancient cultures used tools like rose thorns, sharks' teeth, and pelican bones to push pigments into the skin. Natural pigments like red ochre and soot were used to provide the color. In New Zealand, the Maori tribe tattooed both female and male members of the community. The Maori tribe regarded the head as the most sacred part of the body. Women only received facial tattoos, mainly around the lips, chin, and nostrils. The entire face of the man was tattooed. Some members of the Maori tribe wore spiral tattoos that started on the buttocks and ended at the knee.
In a tattoo ritual, the Maori used a chisel made of bone to cut lines and shapes in the skin. After the lines were cut, the Maori would tap the chisel, with the edge dipped in pigment, into the lines.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Thai Tattoo Tools
Ancient Thai Tattoo equipment.
Traditional Thai tattoo tools were made from quill-like bamboo needles. Split in two and razor sharp, they range from six to twelve inches in length. A tattoo's placement on the body has great significance in Thai tattooing, the closer a tattoo is to the head, where the soul is thought to reside, the greater the power a tattoo is thought to have.
It's a long tradition in Thailand for soldiers to take on protective tattoos, called Sak Yant. The belief in their powers as charms is so great that it's commonly believed that the right tattoo by the best tattoo master can stop bullets. It's not only the Buddhist designs that are potent but the accompanying prayers. They're chanted by the monks as the near meter long tattoo implements do their work. The fingers of one hand direct the needle, cradling the tip almost as if it were a pool cue, while the other hand drives the needle up and down, he will do this two or three times per second. The resulting series of connected dots in the skin resemble an embroidered tapestry.
Hand-tapped tattoos are painful, but if you believe that you walk away from the experience protected and invincible, it's well worth it!!!
Source: Vanishing Tattoo
It's a long tradition in Thailand for soldiers to take on protective tattoos, called Sak Yant. The belief in their powers as charms is so great that it's commonly believed that the right tattoo by the best tattoo master can stop bullets. It's not only the Buddhist designs that are potent but the accompanying prayers. They're chanted by the monks as the near meter long tattoo implements do their work. The fingers of one hand direct the needle, cradling the tip almost as if it were a pool cue, while the other hand drives the needle up and down, he will do this two or three times per second. The resulting series of connected dots in the skin resemble an embroidered tapestry.
Hand-tapped tattoos are painful, but if you believe that you walk away from the experience protected and invincible, it's well worth it!!!
Source: Vanishing Tattoo
First Electric Tattoo Machine - Thomas Edison
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The first electric tattoo machine was first invented by Thomas Edison in 1876, who drew out blueprints for an electric engraver that became the machine that revolutionized tattooing.
Patents for tattoo machines were filed less than ten years later by different individuals, each adding their own improvements. Source: Engtechmag Samuel O’Reilly is credited with the first created “electric pen”, the device built from the Edison blueprints. The only thing O’Reilly changed from the Edison version was that he added an ink reservoir.
The machine we use today was first patented by Charlie Wagner, which was called a dual coil reciprocating engraver, especially made for tattooing. Source: WikiPedia |
Source: WikiPedia
Source: Engtechmag
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Ancient Japanese Tattoo tools
Source: Motor City Tattoo Museum
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The traditional art of Tebori, or tattooing by hand, is a technique practiced by the Japanese. A row of needles adhered to a wood or metal handle is the equipment used by a Tebori master to tattoo the skin.
The constant motion of moving the hand holding the handle creates the tattoo design. Unlike modern electric tattoo machines, the Tebori master performs the tattoo in an ongoing rhythm, instead of performing a line and stopping. Go over to the Motor City Tattoo Museum and check out all the incredible pieces from the past. Source: Motor City Tattoo Museum |
Modern Tattoo Technology
Modern tattoo machines and permanent makeup applicators pierce the skin between 50 - 3,000 times per second. That is a lot of punctures in the skin, which is why a tattoo is considered an open wound. This is why it’s so important to follow all the health and safety precautions necessary to prevent infection.
Coil Machines:
They are perhaps the most common or the most popular, and we can classify them as classic or traditional. They are made out of electromagnetic coils that, by means of vibrations, move up and down a metal bar with the needle incorporated. The needles are welded, and the punch generated by the hammer with the core that drives them produces a constant sound. The sound is recognizable, and it is very loud, so for many people it can be very annoying; but for others it can be soothing and calming.
In addition, these machines are heavier due to the number of components they have. In very long sessions, this can cause pain or discomfort. They are usually used to draw lines, although it depends on the taste of each tattoo artist. They can also be used for shading, but you need to disassemble them and change their mounts, which can slow down the process. This is defined by the amount of copper turns in the coils, which is called the wrap. It is said that they damage the skin more, since the puncture is much more powerful, but they are also readily available and cheaper compared to rotary machines because of the materials they are made of. It is necessary to know how to calibrate them and have some machinery knowledge. Its speed can be adapted. This is a great advantage for tattoo artists.
In addition, these machines are heavier due to the number of components they have. In very long sessions, this can cause pain or discomfort. They are usually used to draw lines, although it depends on the taste of each tattoo artist. They can also be used for shading, but you need to disassemble them and change their mounts, which can slow down the process. This is defined by the amount of copper turns in the coils, which is called the wrap. It is said that they damage the skin more, since the puncture is much more powerful, but they are also readily available and cheaper compared to rotary machines because of the materials they are made of. It is necessary to know how to calibrate them and have some machinery knowledge. Its speed can be adapted. This is a great advantage for tattoo artists.
Rotary Machine:
These are newer machines and therefore, they took a little longer to market than traditional machines. But they are usually the first option for many tattoo artists. We will tell you why.
- They use interchangeable cartridges instead of soldered needles.
- They are less noisy, almost silent and this is a great advance because it improves the work space, especially if you tattoo for many hours.
- They are much lighter, since they do not require so many components.They are versatile and can be used for lines as well as shading and filling. But it depends on the speed and the number and type of needles you use.
- They can be less damaging to the skin, and for those who do not have much experience in machines, can be of great help.
- They are more expensive. Despite having many apparent benefits, they cost more than classic machines.
- It is not necessary to calibrate them, since they have a much simpler internal motor without the electromagnetic mechanism. This is what defines its name, since it does not hit, but it spins, it rotates.
Pen Machines:
They are more pencil-like machines (hence, the name), and many tattoo artists opt for these models. The reason is that they are much more comfortable since it feels more like drawing with a pen on the skin.
- These machines are widely used for freehand tattoo artists for its ergonomic possibilities and adaptable designs. In addition, they are very light, which allows you to have more freedom when drawing and working in longer sessions. It’s a question of preferences; there are no machines that are better or worse, just designs that are more suitable than others, depending on your requirements and skill level.
- Most importantly, it can be used wirelessly, allowing the tattooist to have more freedom when working and moving around the space without having to disturb the client.
Professional Tattooing Today
Modern tattooing combines centuries of artistic tradition with advanced equipment and strict safety standards. Professional tattoo studios use sterile tools, high-quality tattoo machines, and carefully prepared workstations to ensure both precision and safety.
Studios like Sin on Skin Tattoo Studio in Halifax continue this tradition by combining professional tattoo techniques with modern equipment and experienced artists dedicated to high-quality work.
Studios like Sin on Skin Tattoo Studio in Halifax continue this tradition by combining professional tattoo techniques with modern equipment and experienced artists dedicated to high-quality work.
How Tattoos Work: The Tattooing Process Explained
Tattooing is the process of placing pigment into the skin to create a permanent design. Modern tattoos are created by depositing specialized tattoo ink into the dermis, the layer of skin just beneath the outer surface known as the epidermis.
Professional tattoo artists use precision tattoo machines that move needles rapidly to place small amounts of ink into the dermal layer. Because this layer of skin does not shed the same way the surface does, the pigment remains visible for many years.
Historically, tattooing methods were much simpler. Early tattoo traditions often involved making small cuts in the skin and rubbing pigment into the wounds. Over time, the craft evolved into the advanced tattoo machines and professional techniques used in studios today.
Today, professional tattoo studios follow strict hygiene and sterilization practices, using single-use needles, medical-grade supplies, and carefully controlled workstations to ensure safe tattoo procedures.
Professional tattoo artists use precision tattoo machines that move needles rapidly to place small amounts of ink into the dermal layer. Because this layer of skin does not shed the same way the surface does, the pigment remains visible for many years.
Historically, tattooing methods were much simpler. Early tattoo traditions often involved making small cuts in the skin and rubbing pigment into the wounds. Over time, the craft evolved into the advanced tattoo machines and professional techniques used in studios today.
Today, professional tattoo studios follow strict hygiene and sterilization practices, using single-use needles, medical-grade supplies, and carefully controlled workstations to ensure safe tattoo procedures.
What Happens to Tattoo Ink in the Skin?
When a tattoo is applied, the needles pass through the outer layer of skin (the epidermis) and deposit pigment into the dermis beneath it. The body immediately recognizes the ink particles as foreign material, triggering the immune system’s natural healing response.
During the healing process:
Pigments remain trapped within the dermal layer, resistant to the natural skin renewal process that occurs at the surface.
Over long periods of time — often decades — some pigment particles can slowly disperse deeper into the skin. This gradual movement is why older tattoos may appear slightly softer or less detailed than when they were first applied.
During the healing process:
- The outer layer of skin begins to regenerate and shed, removing any excess surface pigment.
- Immune cells interact with the ink particles and help stabilize them within the skin.
- The dermis repairs itself as collagen forms around the tiny punctures created during tattooing.
Pigments remain trapped within the dermal layer, resistant to the natural skin renewal process that occurs at the surface.
Over long periods of time — often decades — some pigment particles can slowly disperse deeper into the skin. This gradual movement is why older tattoos may appear slightly softer or less detailed than when they were first applied.