Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada (Volume 44)

by Jamie Jelinski

In 1891, J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients.

From this early example of tattooing as work, Jamie Jelinski takes us from coast to coast with detours to the United States, England, and Japan as he traces the evolution of commercial tattooing in Canada over more than one hundred years. Needle Work offers insight into how tattoo artists navigated regulation, the types of spaces they worked in, and the dynamic relationship between the images they tattooed on customers and other forms of visual culture and artistic enterprise. Merging biographical narratives with an examination of tattooing’s place within wider society, Jelinski reveals how these commercial image makers bridged conventional gaps between cultural production and practical, for-profit work, thereby establishing tattooing as a legitimate career.

Richly illustrated and drawing on archives, print media, and objects held in institutions and private collections across Canada and beyond, Needle Work provides a timely understanding of a vocation that is now familiar but whose intricate history has rarely been considered.

424 pages, Hardcover

Published June 15, 2024

About the author

Jamie Jelinski is an interdisciplinary scholar of visual culture. He lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Taylor Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it quite interesting to see how the practice of tattooing developed over time in Canada, from itinerant workers operating out of hotel rooms for short stretches, to the back of penny arcades, and eventually to permanent respectable shops. I quite enjoyed the sections describing how cities went out of their way to discourage tattoo artists from operating within them and the different methods they used to make it difficult for their businesses to survive. I thought a bit too much time was spent trying to build the not very interesting connection between tattooing and the fine art world, and I would have liked to have seen more emphasis placed on describing the the actual tattoos that people would have been receiving, but overall it was an interesting survey and a good jumping off point for other academic works to build upon.

[Yara El-Soueidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review coming.