Arts
This weeks episode of tall tales and tattooing is a little different to the normal format of the show, its a tattoo history episode and I tell the story of Henri C Swift who tattooed at 165 Cuba street in wellington in 1908. Henri was a pioneer of electric tattooing in New Zealand, immigrating from the Uk in 1907. With the invention of the electric tattoo machine in 1891 Henri was of the new breed who saw tattooing as a commercial business, he was an astute businessman making use of all the advertising that was available to him at the time, though his time in Wellington wasn't an easy life. I would like to say thank you to Rich Hardy for helping me with my research into this episode, the photo of Henri was sourced by him and shared in his buzz worthy tattoo article " a tattoo journey"