It is also thanks to him that single-use needles became a thing. For a long while, Collins only used the purple ink on those he felt earned it, swearing them to secrecy about its origin. Wanting to show up another local artist who often tried to piss Sailor Jerry off, Collins worked with a company to create what would be called carbazole violet, the first purple ink. Before Collins, tattoos were done in only a few colors-black, green, red, and yellow. Defining Tattoo Culture Oliver Peck tattoos a client.ĭuring his career as a tattoo artist, Collins not only created iconic tattoo art that artists across the world reproduce today, but he also helped grow the art and craft of tattooing as a whole.Īmong his greatest accomplishments, it is thanks to Collins that we have purple ink. As a symbolic middle finger to the government, Collins closed his shop and continued to tattoo in secret until he was convinced to come back to the business by another tattoo artist, Bob Palm. Collins returned to tattooing and did so until the 1950s when the IRS fined him. When he got back to Hawai’i, it was, for all intents and purposes, a different world. Wanting to get back into the fray, Collins tried and was denied reenlistment, so instead he signed up for the Merchant Marines, allegedly working in Japanese waters for much of World War II.
There, Collins continued working as a tattoo artist until 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It was at this point that the corpse-that was not actually a corpse-sat up, scaring Collins, much to the delight of the others present.Īfter a few years of tattooing Navy cadets from the Great Lakes Naval Training Academy, Collins himself enlisted and was shipped off to various ports in Asia before landing in Hawai’i in the 1930s. When they got there, Collins took hold of the arm, getting ready to tattoo the corpse. The story goes that Thomas took Collins to a morgue during the night shift so that he could practice on real skin.
ONCE MORE INTO THE FRAY TATTOO HOW TO
There, he met his first tattooing mentor, Gib “Tatts” Thomas, who taught Collins how to use a tattoo gun and, in the process, scared the shit out of him. (What would probably, in this day and age, be called “artisanal tattooing,” but is mostly known by the fun-sounding “stick-n-poke.”)Įventually, Collins landed in the bustling metropolis that was 1920s Chicago. When Collins experimented with the craft, he was usually doing it with a needle and black ink to hand poke designs into people’s skin. It needs to be noted here that when we say experimenting here, we don’t mean tattooing like you’d think of with a gun and pigments and, you know, tip-top sterilization. Collins began experimenting with the craft himself, working with whatever tools he could find and practicing on anyone who would be willing to let him (even paying bums in cheap wine to let him practice on them).
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