1001 Tattoo Facts 181-200
By Paul Sayce
www.tattoo.co.uk
Fact No. 181
181. The cigarette company W.A. A.C. Churchman of Ipswich, England, issue a set of fifty cigarette cards with their product, entitled “In Town Tonight” in 1938. And card number seven featured British tattoo artist George Burchett. The cards come via a packet of ten cigarettes and in twenty packs during the war. Also in the set was a certain Mr. Tom Beasley, a swordsmith; Rass Prince Monolulu the horseracing tipster, of whom it was said that a race meeting wouldn’t be the same without him; Miss May Storey, a female detective; Dante the master magician; and REM the artist, who, along with Burchett, made just six of the colorful characters that helped make up the set. “In Town Tonight” was a very popular BBC radio show that featured people in a somewhat unusual professions and ran from the 18th of November 1933 up until 1960.
182. 1926 saw the Tobacco Company Wills of Bristol & London issued a set of cigarette cards entitled “Early Scenes & Maori Life,” with card no. 43 showing a black & white photographic image of a Maori elder tattooing a young Maori girl.
183. Tobacco cards were a very popular item to collect, and not only in Great Britain. As in 1932 the Eckstein-Halpaus cigarette company of Dresden Germany had two cards featuring tattooing in their “Die Volkerschau in Bildern” (The people in Pictures) series with card no. 152 depicting a fully tattooed adult male from the Marquesas Islands and card no. 82 showing Japanese tattooing.
184. In 1902 the Ogden’s Tab Cigarette Company Ltd. issued a series of two hundred tobacco cards with card number no. 13 of the “General Interest C Series” showing a photographic scene of three young sailors from HMS Victoriouswith the young man in the middle of the image having many tattoos on his arms and chest.
Fact No. 185
Fact No. 185
185. In the 2005 European Cup final between Liverpool and AC Milan, there was at least six players who sported tattoos. The six players were Gennaro Gattuso, Paolo Maldini, Andrei Shevchenko, who all starred for Milan, with Harry Kewell, John Arne Riise and Djibrill Cisse playing for the English club, Liverpool. Of course there could have been more, but the above six showed their art, with Maldini, Gattuso and Riise all sporting tribal tattoos. Kewell had a panther on his left arm and an Aboriginal bird type design on his lower right arm and hand. Shevchenko and Cisse had more of a standard sort of artwork. Cisse it must be said has a large number of tattoos with a full backpiece and one on his chest, as well as having a tattoo on his stomach and many tattoos on his legs, with his latest tattoo being the name of his daughter. For the record, in the match that Liverpool won 3-2 on penalties after a 3-3 draw, Paulo Maldini scored the first goal in the first minute. Gattuso gave away the penalty that allowed Liverpool to make it 3-3, and Shevchenko and Riise both missed in the penalty shootout with Cisse being the only one of the six who scored in the sudden death penalties. Kewell got injured in the first half and had to go off in the twenty-third minute, so all six tattooed players had a big part in the biggest game in European soccer
Fact No. 186
Fact No. 186
186. Bill Thomas, a tattoo artist who was born in Limehouse in the East End of London, England, in 1872 first tried tattooing at the age of ten, but didn’t take up professional tattooing until his late twenties, after gaining his tattoo skills working the seaports of Antwerp and Ostend in Belgium. Bill was also believed to be one of the first in England to use an electric tattooing tool after buying one from Tom Riley in 1904, costing five pounds, according to Jack Zeek, who recounted this fact in a taped interview with the author in the late 1990s. Bill also tattooed with many travelling fairs and in later life settled down to tattoo in Ludgershall, Wiltshire, England. Billy Thomas also sold designs and equipment for a while. He died in 1969, age 97.
187. Prince Franz Von Teck (1837-1900), the father of Britain’s Queen Mary, was tattooed with a frog about to catch a fly design on his right forearm. It is thought that the celebrated London tattoo artist Tom Riley did the work…
188. Joey Jones, the former Liverpool and Wales soccer player, won two league championships and two European cups for Liverpool, also played in seventy-two full Internationals for Wales. Jones has a dagger tattooed on his left forearm that he proudly exhibited every time he played. Joey, who also won a second division championship medal with Chelsea, was a first-class left back and a very popular player with fans everywhere he played…
Fact No. 189
189. The Rolling Stones released the LP record entitled “Tattoo You” on their own Eponymous label on August the 31, 1981.
190. When Jagger sang “Sympathy for the Devil” on the 1968 Christmas TV show Rock N Roll Circus, he ripped off his scarlet colored T-shirt to reveal a painted-on demon’s face tattoo on his chest, which in itself was quite rare. as tattoos (even fake ones) were not seen in British media circles back then, as much as they are today.
191. Over the years a tattoo artist can become so skilled in the art that to tattoo a design freehand is no problem. Portsmouth tattoo artist Ron Ackers used to have a party trick that went one better. Ron could tattoo blindfolded, and that is what he did at a Swedish tattoo convention in the late ’90s. The tattoo he did was a swallow, and it truly amazed the people who crowded around to watch. Another tattoo artist who would put on a show was Pinky Yun, who could draw a design with both hands at the same time, and you could not see any difference in which hand did which. Pinky also, at one time, would outline a tattoo with his right hand and color it in with his left.
193. In Great Britain in 1997, a certain Mr Jeffrey Morris lost his job at the local undertakers when his employer, the funeral director, decided to sack him because they didn’t like his tattoos. The newspaper that reported this fact did not say whether Jeffrey’s clients minded them, however.
Fact No. 191
Fact No. 195
194. Princess Stephanie of Monaco showed her smiling-face tattoo, which resides on her right wrist, on the night of the Automobile Federation’s awards ceremony in 1996. The Princess was there to present the F1 world championship trophy to Britain’s Damon Hill.
195. In 1996, Taschen, the book publishers, put out Hanky Panky’s book “1,000 Tattoos,” and, after the hardback, came the soft back, then postcards. Then, to cap it all off, a pocket-sized edition later appeared. Of course, it didn’t contain all 1,000 tattoo’s, but it only retailed at £1.99, proving just what a success “1000 Tattoos” was in the first place.
196. Smash Hits, the pop music magazine for the youngsters of Great Britain, had on its cover of February 1997, twelve, free, stick-on tattoos.
197. In 1995, the first-ever tattoo studio opened its doors for business, on the Isle of Man, in the U.K.
Fact No. 198
198. Filip Leu was born on the 11th of June 1967 in Paris, France, and did his first tattoo at the age of thirteen in Goa, India (1980). Leu started tattooing full time in Switzerland in 1983. In 1985, Filip set off on a world tour, tattooing in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and with Horikin, Mitsuaki Ohwada, and Horitohi Owada Tashikazu in Japan, before tattooing for a year at Don Ed Hardy’s Realistic Tattoo studio in San Francisco with Bill Salmon and Don Thome. He also worked with John “The Dutchman” in Vancouver, Canada, studied machine set-up with Paul Rogers (where Filip made five or six machines himself, which are later sold by Paul). I saw him working in 1988 with Claus Fuhrmann and Bernie Luther in Austria. In 1990, Filip married Titine Kesselring (who is also a very talented artist), spent nine months in 1991-’92, tattooing in New York with Jonathan Shaw. He then moved on to spend three months with Bill and Junii Salmon at their Diamond Club Tattoo Studio in San Francisco. In 1994-’95, Filip tattoos in Ibiza, Spain and again works in Japan, this time with Hideo Uchiyama in Tokyo. He then retires from tattooing to concentrate on music and makes and releases a CD with his brother, before returning to tattooing back in Lausanne, Switzerland. Filip is regarded by many as the world’s very best tattoo artist, and, if this statement seems a little overstated, you have only got to go to any tattoo convention in the world and ask the organizers who would be the tattoo artist they wanted to attend their show, and most would name Filip as that artist. Filip’s clientele consists mainly of tattoo artists, and has a considerable waiting list.
199. The late Felix Leu (Filip’s Dad) started his tattooing career at Jock’s Tattoo Studio in Kings Cross, London, England, in 1978. And it was Felix who said, in a taped interview, that it was after a chance meeting with two guys in Yugoslavia, who for some reason or another thought that he was a tattoo artist and offered him money to tattoo them, that Felix phoned big Jock in London, to ask if Jock would teach him. Jock agreed and Felix set off for London with the whole of the Leu family in a van, arriving at Jock’s place a few days later.
200. Filip Leu’s mother, Loretta, is American and studied at the New York University and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where she met Felix. Felix was Swiss and also studied at Brooklyn, as well as the San Francisco Art Institute. Both were wonderful painters and tattoo artists in their own right. Sadly Felix has passed on, but Loretta and the Leus are still doing some tattoo conventions and producing great artwork.
