Handmade in Chelsea: The Medicine Man

On a recent trip to The Wellcome Collection in North West London, I came across something very unusual and fascinating, something I had never seen before...something which made me stop and stare for quite a long time...behind the security railing, through the glass case amongst countless numbers of extraordinary items from Henry Wellcome's collection, there lay slices of preserved human skin! These small, strangely coloured pieces of flesh were carved from an executed criminal, in France, sometime during 1850-1900's. Etched on each was a tattoo, one of a sailor, drawn in black in an illustrative manner, with hat, moustache and stripy top and the other of a female figure with long, flowing locks of hair.

To see tattoos from such an early era was startling...I never thought about where or when tattoos originated, and who typically would sport them back then and what purpose they would serve, as I only have had experience of what I see in the modern world, where the tattoo is generally a fashion symbol, sentimental gesture or mistake! A lot of people in this generation will probably have at least one (myself included).

Through research, I discovered that tattooing is one of the oldest forms of body art and was first seen, in the western world, on 18th century sailors returning from trips abroad, where it was already popular with the natives. It was also seen on a lot of prisoners from the time and it seems that this skin marking was a way of branding certain people, of making them stand out in a mainly negative context;

"While tattoos and other forms of body modifications have stood since the earliest encounters with Polynesians as a hallmark of the primitive, the display of tattooed 'natives'...helped solidify these notions of the primitive Other. This was particularly true where native exhibits were contrasted with the highest achievements of Western society to both accentuate the primitiveness of the natives and to emphasise the civilisation of the Western world...influential in constructing a narrative about tattooed people as savages..."

Bodies of Inscription. Margo DeMello

These are images, from around 1940+, taken from the Sergei Vasiliev Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery

I wondered what actually changed, and made the tattoo not something to convey savagery but to show expression of self, and individuality, as a lot of people might describe it today. How could something that was once a mark of criminality evolve into 'artwork' which people proudly display on their bodies for the world to see?...That is fashion, an ever developing, constantly evolving industry.

"The origins of this transition can be found in the lifestyles of sailors and what this represented to many working-class men back home: adventure, travel, exotic lands and people, and a free spirit...they were the middlemen through which the tattoo was transformed from a mark of primitivism to a mark of adventure."

Bodies of Inscription. Margo DeMello

Although it cannot be said that this view of tattooed people today is shared by all; of course some folk, probably of the older generation, see tattoos still as negative as they once were, while others, particularly the younger generation are enticed to permanently ink their bodies perhaps with the influence in today's increased media and celebrity culture. No doubt the vast majority of young males who now have full sleeve tattoos covering their arms where inspired by the likes of David Beckham, who could not be further from the perceptions of the earlier idea of a tattooed man.