Unidentified
Eletrical Tattooing
May one see it?
Unknown: the museum keeps its counsel
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known. Whether it is on view today, the museum does not say, and we were not trained to guess.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the sculpture
A New York tattoo artist, Samuel Reilly, invented the electric tattoo machine in 1891. He adapted Thomas Edison's design for an electric pen, in which a reciprocating motor powered a needle, to create a tattoo machine that was faster and less painful than previous hand methods. The machine needed to be portable because early American tattoo artists traveled constantly along the eastern seaboard, selling their craft to sailors at the different ports. Needles of various sizes, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a small bottle of tattoo ink appear inside this box.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1986.65.379
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 6 days ago
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0