Vintage Ettlin's Portraits, 17 Chatham Square, New York, Tattoo Picture, (Photograph), Traditional Tattoo, Tattooed Man ("Painless" Jack Tryon), Tattooed By Charlie Wagner, And Lew "The Jew" Alberts.
Picture Includes: Tattooed Man, (Traditional, Old School Tattoo), Black And White Photo.
This is a 8'X10" (inches) Black And White Photo, Of A Tattooed Man with Traditional Tattoo's.
These Items Are High Quality Reproductions! NOT ORIGINAL.
Giclee Print, Using Archival Ink On High Quality Gloss Photo Paper.
These would be great for display in any Tattoo Shop, Or Any Vintage Photo, Postcard, Or Tattoo Collection!
Much has been written about this
New York City tattooist. He seems to have been the focal point for the
press for his generation of tattoo artists. Charlie Wagner worked the
Bowery for over 50 years starting in the1890s until his death in 1953.
This fact alone may explain the amount of press coverage that he
received. Wagner was not undeserving of this attention based on the
quality of his tattooing alone. To his credit, he tattooed some of the
major attractions of that era in addition to his other claims to fame.
One of Wagner's more important contributions was his tattoo machine
ideas that he patented in 1904. This patent was the first tattoo machine
patented with coils in a vertical position, that is, in line with the
tube assembly. This was a major improvement on machine design; in fact
most machines built today use this alignment. Another of Charlie's
endeavors that is not well known today was his supply business. The
patenting of his machine idea in 1904 may have been the spark that set
off his supply business. We don't know if this 1904 tattoo machine was
ever manufactured in any numbers and to date, none are known to exist.
With the expert help of Bill Jones, Wagner probably sold many tattoo
machines throughout the years. A few years ago, the Archive came across a
Charles Wagner Tattoo Supply pricelist! It was mailed to Fred Marquand
in the 1920s. It was simply a list of items and prices rather than a
catalog. Handwritten on an 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper, it was a
mimeographed copy of an inventory of items. There were no illustrations
and no photographs. There were a few flash samples enclosed but they
were poorly printed in gray ink on thin paper. This is a bit of a
surprise coming from the man who was billed as the "Michelangelo of
Tattooing”.
Other suppliers of that era, like Waters and Miller, sold their wares
through very fancy multi-paged catalogs showing photographs of their
machines and pages of illustrations of the flash that they offered. In a
1925 letter, Wagner seemed sure that he did not need the added expense
of the fancy catalog to sell his items. This is a far cry from what his
competitors were turning out. In this direct quote from his letter, (and
note the spelling and choppy sentences), Wagner said, "Eventually you
will buy frome (sic) me as I am the only one having a U.S. patent
tattooing machine and electric devices issued by the U.S. Patent Office,
no other supply house can show you these machines, (they) are the best,
none better at any price anywhere." This letter was signed, "I remain
Prof. Chas. Wagner, 208 Bowery, N.Y. City."
Albert Parry in his book Tattoo, Secrets of a Strange Art, notes that
there were four suppliers who advertised during the Depression, but
Wagner was not among them. Tattoo legend has it that Wagner lost a small
fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In the years after the crash,
Wagner could be seen at the front of his shop in an effort to pull in
potential customers. By the 1940s with World War II these supplier ads
were back, along with Wagner's good fortune.
In formulating this article, a couple of questions came to mind. Why
does a simple mimeographed price list seem out of place for a tattooist
who worked so hard to cultivate an urban sophisticated image? And why,
if his supply business was so successful, have so few of his wares
survived?
Charlie Wagner, one of America's great tattoo legends tattooed in New
York City from the 1890s up until his death in 1953. Working on the
Bowery in lower Manhattan, Wagner took over the shop space at 11 Chatham
Square that Samuel O 'Reilly had occupied. As a matter of fact, Charlie
Wagner really carried on where O'Reilly left off in more ways than one.
They both patented a tattooing machine, and both became very famous for
tattooing sideshow attractions. Samuel O'Reilly patented the first
tattooing machine in 1891 (patent #464,801). Wagner improved upon that
design and received his own patent in 1904 (768,413).
It is said that would-be sideshow attractions flocked to O'Reilly after
hearing about his new tattooing device believing that it would be faster
and less painful to acquire the necessary coverage for show business
work.
After O'Reilly's death in 1909, Charlie Wagner took over much of this
attraction business and went on to establish himself as one of the major
forces in the tattoo world. Charlie Wagner is said to have tattooed 50
attractions during his career, including Betty Broadbent, Clara Clark,
Mildred Hull, Charles Craddock and Joseph Cook, to name but a few. New
York City Tattoo: The Oral History of An Urban Art, written by Michael
McCabe and published by Hardy Marks Publications is a wonderful book on
Wagner and other New York City tattooists.
Originally published by the Tattoo Archive © 2004
Updated 2017
Lew Alberts (Albert Morton
Kurzman) was born December 13, 1880. The son of Jewish immigrants, he
lived in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. When he was a teenager his
parents sent him to a technical high school where he studied drawing and
metalwork. One of the tattoo stories about Alberts that was told for
years was that he was a wallpaper designer before he was a flash artist.
We’ve come to find out that it’s true; after technical high school he
did design wallpaper.
Alberts enlisted in the Army in 1899 and fought during the
Spanish-American War in the Philippines. It is said that he was tattooed
while in the military and also learned the art of tattoo while there.
Tattoo legend has it that after the military Alberts was appalled by the
lack of quality in tattoo designs and upon his return to the States he
settled in the Chatham Square area of New York City where he began to
redesign tattoo flash.
As with many influential characters in tattooing there are
contradicting stories about their lives. Bert Grimm had a different
version of the story about Alberts and his redesigned tattoo flash.
Bert’s story goes that Lew Alberts came through Portland, Oregon after
he got out of the service and caught Charlie Western on a drunken spree.
Alberts bought up all of Western's flash, took it back to New York City
and sold the designs as his own. The true version of this story may
never be known!.
By this time Alberts was professionally known as "Lew the Jew."
He worked for several years with Charlie Wagner at Chatham Square and
may have used Wagner's supply business as an outlet for his flash. As
with many tattooists from this era, on their business cards they offered
machines, pigments, needles, etc. Alberts also sold his wares through
advertisements in publications like Police Gazette but with that said
there is no record of Alberts forming a supply business. Alberts moved
around a bit before settling in Brooklyn, New York at #87 Sand Street.
After World War I his competition became too much with Jack Red Cloud,
Bill Donnelly and Jim Wilson all within a short distance of each other
in Brooklyn. In the late 1920s he moved his shop to his home in Newark,
New Jersey and semi-retired. Lew Alberts died October 8th 1954.
We would like to thank Carmen Nyssen for her help with this Lew
Alberts update. For more on Alberts check out the Hardy Marks book, “Lew The Jew Alberts, Early 20th Century Tattoo Drawings.”
Tattoo Archive © 2016
Painless Jack Tryon, also sometimes known as "Three Star Jack", was often billed as the "World's Most Handsomely Tattooed Man." Charlie Wagner and Lew Alberts tattooed him around the turn of the 20th century.
Tryon worked as an attraction. Little is known where Tryon learned the
art of tattooing, but by early 1910 he was making a name for himself as a
tattooist. He was a man of many talents. Bob Shaw remembered Tryon as a
magician, wirewalker, a hand balancer and fire-eater. Jack's wife was a
snake handler and often worked with him. Tyron also worked as a boss
canvas man on railroad shows like Sells-Floto in 1923.
While in the United States Air Force in the late 1940s Col. William Todd
was stationed at San Antonio, Texas. He recalls that there were "lots
of tattoo shops in San Antonio. On the weekends I would visit the
tattoo shops and get a little piece of work from a gentleman by the name
of Painless Jack Tyron. I got to talking with Jack and wanted to buy a
machine. He fixed me up with a little machine, a bottle of color and 4
or 5 stencils of Air Force wings and such. I took it back to the base,
we only got off Sunday, so Saturday I was tattooing a bunch of my
buddies. I did this for about three weeks. One day the Officer of the
Watch came in and made me wrap my stuff up, and he took it to the
Orderly Room and confiscated it from me. I wanted my machine and stuff
back but I was afraid to say anything. I left there and never heard any
more about it".
Just a few years later, Tryon played a part in Bob Shaw's tattoo career.
At that time, Bob was working for Bert Grimm in St. Louis. "By the
Fall of '48 business was just so slow. Bert contacted an old circus
friend who was in San Antonio, Painless Jack Tryon, and he gave me a
job. I went to San Antonio in May of 1949."
It is interesting that Jack Tryon had an affect on both Bob Shaw and
Col. Todd early in their tattoo careers. Shaw and Todd went on to work
together in Clarksville, Tennessee in the 1950s, at Long Beach,
California in the 1960s, and owned a shop together in Portland, Oregon
in the 1970s. Tex Rowe drifted through San Antonio in the 1940s and
remembered Tryon as "a tattooed man covered by Wagner and Albert,
and an old-time circus tattooer who worked out of an antique circus
wagon. Staked me to my first square meal in days and let me sit-in for a
while to make a little 'walking around' money."
Originally published by the Tattoo Archive © 2003
Updated 2017