The History of Tattoo - Pioneers

August "Capt." Coleman was born in 1884 near Cincinnati, Ohio. Although Coleman claimed his father was also a tattooist, his name has not surfaced as part of tattoo history.It is of course well known that Coleman settled in Norfolk, VA around 1918 and quickly became a living legend in the tattoo business.

Hardy was born in 1945 in Iowa, where he lived for a year before his family moved to California. He attended the San Francisco and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking. Hardy was a student of Sailor Jerry and, through his association, was able to study tattooing in Japan in 1973 with the Japanese classical tattoo master Horihide. He became recognized for incorporating Japanese tattoo aesthetics and technique into his American style work

Tuttle was born in Chariton, Iowa in 1931 but grew up in Ukiah, California. At the age of fourteen he purchased his first tattoo for $3.50.In 1949, he began tattooing professionally.In 1954 he opened his own studio in San Francisco. This first shop was open for nearly 30 years. Tuttle tattooed Janis Joplin, Cher, Henry Fonda, Paul Stanley, and several other notable musicians and celebrities of the time.

Paul Rogers’ influence on tattooing is immense. Rogers is the bridge that connects the best of the old-school American traditional tattooing to some of the most accomplished artists of the modern renaissance. Tattoo giants such as Don Ed Hardy, Greg Irons and George Bone, to name but a few, have all benefited not just from his over 50 years in the business, but also from the remarkable sophistication of the machines he designed, universally acknowledge to have been the best money could buy. Rogers later formed a partnership with Huck Spaulding establishing one of the most famous and highly respected tattoo supply companies in the world, Spaulding and Rogers.

Collins was born on January 14, 1911 in Reno but grew up in Northern california. As a child he hopped freight trains across the country and learned tattooing from a man named "Big Mike" from Palmer, Alaska, originally using the hand-pricking method. In the late 1920s he met Tatts Thomas from Chicago who taught him how to use a tattoo machine. He practiced on drunks brought in from skid row. He later sailed the Pacific Ocean before settling in Hawaii in the 1930s. He often wore plain white T-shirts that exposed his ink-sleeved arms.





I am fascinated by the history of all these individual artists and where they came from to where they ended up. These are a few of the pioneers that championed tattooing and were most creative in their work. They were the forefathers of the style I am researching and really enjoyed studying how they worked. Seen as they were the original traditional tattooists their designs will feature heavily in my research.