From his permanent chair behind the drawing board, with the rhythmic chatter of the tattoo machines in the background, Henk Schiffmacher smiles bare his golden front teeth. His thoughts shifted to the early days of the tattoo in the Netherlands. It’s a dull, rainy day at Ceintuurbaan 416 in Amsterdam. Schiffmacher’s proud beard has turned grey-red. As always, he wears signature Carhartt dungarees.
There were hardly any rules at the time, at the end of the seventies in the shop of his teacher Tattoo Peter op de Wallen. “We worked in Sodom and Gomorrah,” says Schiffmacher. The customer base consisted mainly of ‘sailors, criminals, bohemians and prostitutes’. Civilians hardly ever came.
Other times. An estimated 60 million people in the EU countries now have a tattoo, including about two million Dutch people. The Netherlands has more than 1,600 tattoo parlors with an official permit. These shops are subject to strict regulations. Too strict, tattoo artists think. A coarse-grained European regulation stipulates that four thousand components of tattoo pigments will be banned since the beginning of this year. It cannot be ruled out that they are harmful or even carcinogenic, the reasoning goes. In particular, the use of certain blue and green pigments – important for tattoos – has been restricted (although there is a run-off arrangement until January 1, 2023).
Tattoos have moved from a fringe subculture to the mainstream – and different laws apply. In the words of historian Henri Beunders, who wrote a book about them, they have turned out to be a ‘rising cultural asset’. Traditionally, trends trickled down from the high society down.
Maoris on clogs
‘A symptom of this TikTok era is that Maoris now walk around in wooden shoes in North Brabant,’ says Schiffmacher. He smiles. “Fat Germans are promoted to Samoan prince.” Everyone can choose their own tattoos and business is business. But, quite apart from the questionable cultural appropriation, according to Schiffmacher, tattoos lose their meaning raison d’être: making one’s character readable.
Schiffmacher: ‘A lot of people think they are highly original, but they shop on TikTok.’ The result: everyone walks around with the same tattoos. ‘For a while everyone wanted a infinity-sign. Such a lying figure eight.’ Or: ‘A compass with roses. They say: this is so special to me, because my grandfather passed away at two to twelve and he loved roses. In the evening they walk into the cafe and see that four more people have that tattoo. Everyone has that tattoo.’
He shakes his head. “Once someone does have an original idea, they make the crucial mistake of posting a photo of the tattoo on social media.”
‘Your fantasy is for sale’, is Schiffmacher’s summary of an era. ‘It remains an incredibly beautiful profession. But the romance is gone. We are perishing because of our own success.’
Excessive Regulation
Of course, not all change is bad. Schiffmacher’s teacher Peter worked without gloves at the time. Clients sometimes came back with inflamed wounds that were dripping with pus. “Ah yes,” Peter shrugged. “It still has to swear.” He did have a sterilizer, but he mainly used it to keep sausage rolls warm. Needles lasted for days; hepatitis popped up every now and then.
The establishment of the first and still only Dutch tattoo outpatient clinic in 2017 by dermatologist Sebastiaan van der Bent – first at the Amsterdam UMC, now continued at the Alrijne Hospital Leiden – Schiffmachers received full support. In 2 to 6 percent of the cases, people suffer from skin complaints after getting a tattoo. Safety rules are therefore necessary.
But the pendulum has shifted in recent years, says Schiffmacher. Van der Bent, together with European colleagues, also protested against the so-called REACH regulation (Registration† Evaluation† Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals), although in principle he is in favor of EU-wide legislation and regulations. In recent research, he showed that only 1.9 percent of all complications are caused by blue or green pigments. ‘Of all allergies caused by tattoos, red pigments are involved in nine out of ten reactions,’ says Van der Bent. However, the ink component that is responsible for these allergies (with red pigments) is not yet known: the question is whether REACH will have any influence on this.
For other problems that Van der Bent sees at the tattoo clinic, the arrangement probably also offers no solace. For example, complications are often caused by bacteria or viruses. Or patients simply appear to have a predisposition to certain (autoimmune) diseases, which only come to light when they get a tattoo.
According to Van der Bent, the regulation does lead to ‘the bitter practice that tattoo artists have little or no tattoo inks at their disposal for a period of time to work with. The alternative blue and green pigments that are coming onto the market have been less researched and may therefore pose more health risks.’ In Schiffmacher’s tattoo parlor they are already noticing one consequence of the scheme: the new pigments are extremely expensive. For the time being, this has not yet been passed on in the prices of the tattoos, he says.
A young woman walks into the tattoo parlor. If she can take a look around. ‘Yes, dear,’ says Schiffmacher. He has portraits of tattoo masters in Delft blue hanging on the wall. He points to Paulo Suluape, the famous Samoan tattoo artist. Schiffmacher: ‘A good friend, ambassador of the Samoan tattoo – was unfortunately murdered by his own wife. He had too many mistresses.’