Tattoo History...
The following is a brief excerpt from Tattoo History: A Source Book, by Stephen G. Gilbert now available in print.
A WHIRLWIND TOUR OF TATTOO HISTORY.
An anthology of historical writings on tattooing. Each selection is accompanied by an introduction which provides background information and comment. The selections were written by historians, adventurers, explorers, anthropologists, criminologists, psychoanalysts and journalists,and include accounts of tattooing in the Ancient World, Polynesia, Japan,the pre-Columbian Americas, 19th century Europe and the US. Also included are interviews with contemporary tattoo artists and historians such as Ed Hardy, Lyle Tuttle, Tricia Allen and Kazuo Oguri. Tattoo History Source Book will be of interest to everyone with a serious case of tattoo mania.
The following selection is from Memoirs of a Tattooist by George Burchett. [London: Oldbourne, 1958.] Copyright 1958 by George Burchett. Quoted here by kind permission of George Burchett's son, Leslie Burchett.George Burchett was London's leading tattooist for over 50 years. In the course of a long and full life he traveled throughout the world and assembled an extensive collection of documents, pictures, and books on the history of tattooing. Among his clients were actresses, doctors, judges, a bishop, and assorted royalty - including King George V of England and the late King Frederick of Denmark.
If I were a scholar, which I am not-the"Professor" before my name being traditional, honorary and unofficial-I would love to write a history of tattooing. Very little has been published about it. I have gone to the trouble of having translations made of passages which interested me, in some of the works published by foreign scientists, and I have read all the books on the subject published in English. But, apart from Dr. W.D. Hambly's great work,The History of Tattooing And It's Significance, published in 1925, and a shorter study by Dr. Cyril Polson, F.R.C.P., Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Leeds, in 1948, I know of no important book which appeared since the end of the last century. Tattooing by puncture, with a sharp tool or needle which introduces a dye under the top layer of skin, was first practiced, so far as we know, in Ancient Egypt. Clay dolls fashioned during that civilization are the earliest evidence of tattooing to have been preserved. I have seen two of these dolls, with their tattoo-marks, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Dr. Hambly says there is positive archeological proof that body markings by puncture tattoo were applied to human beings as well as female clay figurines in Egypt between 4000 and 2000 B.C.
