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Pepe & Mina Von B
43 articles
Alessandro Negrini (a.k.a. Pepe) has been tattooing since 1996, opening his first studio in Viareggio in 2001, and has gone on to establish the new "Elctric Tattooing Viareggio" in 2017. He has returned to painting in 2014, and to watercolour in particular, which he had abandoned following his studies at Belle Arti to devote himself entirely to the art of tattoos. Romina Bicicchi (a.k.a. Mina Von B) is a professional editor/translator and a philosophical writer. She graduated in Philosophy at the University of Pisa and in Publishing at the University of Florence. She is the author of Filosofia 3 (2008), Freud (2009), Nietzsche (2009), Vivere con filosofia (2010), Tattoo Portraits (2015), Il divino giullare: un genio di nome Fo (2016).
Tattooing from #A to #Z: Henk Schiffmacher” Hanky Panky”
Hendrikus Johannes Everhardus “Henk” Schiffmacher is a tattoo artist, painter, writer, collector, world traveler. Born in 1952 in Harderwijk and grown up in a catholic butcher’s family, Schiffmacher displayed talent…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Leonard “Stoney” St. Clair
Mister St. Clair was born 1912 in Bluefield, West Virginia. Stoney tattooed out of a wheelchair, a “struggle-buggy” as he called it. He had been in that chair for all…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Bob Shaw
Bob Shaw was a tattooist who, at the age of sixteen, had a full set of sleeves from Bert Grimm. Bob learned the art of tattooing from Bert, after getting…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Paul Rogers
Paul Rogers was born in 1905, in North Carolina. He spent much of his childhood moving from one cotton town to the next, as the family sought employment in the…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Bev Robinson “Cindy Ray”
The Story of a Tattooed Girl was the title of Cindy Ray’s first book. Back in the 60’s this was big news: a tattooed woman finally published her story about…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Cliff Raven
Cliff Raven Ingram was born in a little town outside Chicago on August 24, 1932. He was one of a handful of tattoo artists (along with Sailor Jerry Collins and…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Tony Polito
Tony Polito is a Brooklyn tattooer that has been tattooing since 1959. Tony was at one point during the early 70’s, the only operating tattooer in all of NYC. For…
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Tattooing from #A to #Z: Zeke Owen “Tattoo Zeke”
Zeke Owen, or, as he is better known, “Tattoo Zeke”, was born in 1940 and was the first person to re-open tattooing in Guam, since his uncle, Ernie Sutton, opened…
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Tattooing A to Z #35: Samuel O’Reilly
In 1891 Samuel O’Reilly revolutionized tattooing with his invention of the electric tattoo machine. He opened a tattoo studio at 11 Chatham Square, in the Chinatown area of the Bowery,…
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Tattooing A to Z #34: Lee Roy Minugh
Lee Roy Minugh was a tattooist, Baptist Preacher and Mason who made his name in the tattoo business during the 1950’s at the Pike, where he also worked with the…
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Tattooing A to Z #33: Pat Martynuik “The Picture Machine”
Pat was a native of Vancouver, Canada. He started tattooing as a hobby, picking up pointers from the resident Vancouver tattooist Doc Forbes and his friend of many years, Huck…
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Tattooing A to Z #32: Mike Malone
Mike Malone led one of those lives that you read about in books. Mike was born in California and after high school he studied ceramics, learned carpentry, became a licensed…
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Tattooing A to Z #31: Sutherland Macdonald
Sutherland Macdonald was considered by many to be one of the greatest artists in the history of tattooing. It is said that his first exposure to tattooing was in the…
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Tattooing A to Z #29: Jock Liddell “Tattoo Jock”
Jock Liddel, better known as “Tattoo Jock”, first began tattooing in his native Scotland at a time when there were only a couple of tattoo artists working there – with…
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Tattooing A to Z #28: Felix Leu “Don Feliz”
In 1978 Felix Leu started his tattooing career at “Jocks Tattoo Studio” in Kings Cross, London, England. Felix went on to recall that it was after a chance meeting with…
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Tattooing A to Z #27: Owen Jensen
Owen Jensen was born in Pleasant Grove, Utah. As a young man he worked in the railroad shop in Ogden, Utah. In 1911 he saw the “Buffalo Bill Wild West…
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Mildred Hull “Millie”: The Queen of Bowery
Mildred Hull, the “Queen of the Bowery”, was born in 1897 and was a tattooed lady and a tattoo artist. Mildred started out her career in the cir-cus as a…
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Tattooing A to Z #25: Herbert Hoffmann
Herbert Hoffmann was born in Freienwalde in Pommern, on December 19, 1919. He was a tattoo artist and a photographer. His photographs of tattooed people across Germany resulted in a…
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Tattooing A to Z #24: Don Ed Hardy
Don Ed Hardy is an American artist, perhaps the most famous artist in the world of tattoo. He is best known for his tattoo work, his art and his eponymous…
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Tattooing A to Z #23: Freddie Grossman “CONEY Island Freddie”
“Coney Island Freddie” Grossman, born in 1934, is one of the famous old New York style tattoo artists. He got his name from the years he spent tattooing at New…
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Tattooing A to Z #22: Ole Hansen “King’s Tattooer” / “Tattoo-Ole”
Born in 1925 and raised as an orphan, Ole Hansen was a Danish tattooist who worked in the middle of the twentieth century. Ole is best known as “Tattoo-Ole”, the…
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Tattooing A to Z #21: William Grimshaw
William Grimshaw was a tattoo artist who apparently operated in the Norfolk, Virginia area, during the 1940s and 50s. Little is known of him, including which Grimshaw family line he…
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Tattooing A to Z #20: Bert Grimm
Bert Grimm was born in a little town near Portland, Oregon, on February 8, 1900. He started hanging around tattoo shops when he was about 11 or 12 years old,…
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