LibraryTechtonics

I seem to be on a bender of extra-special collections lately.

Talk about mixed media: watching TLC last night, I saw a show called “Tattoo!: Beauty, Art and Pain”, which was surprisingly educational as just a one hour show. A tattoo archive was featured on the show, but I didn’t catch the name of the person from the archive, and the TLC site doesn’t really have any useful information about the show, so I did a little digging and found this:

Tattoo Archive
“Located in Berkeley, California and founded in 1980 by C. W. Eldridge, the Tattoo Archive is a working shop which does custom tattooing. The Archive also includes a mail-order business selling tattoo collectibles from around the world.

The mission of the Tattoo Archive is to promote the history of tattooing through research and education. A wealth of information is available, just for the asking, to the casual visitor and academic alike.”

It sounds like the right place, and it’s got all sorts of neat links (including a link to one of my favorite exhibits of all time at the American Museum of Natural History, where I purchased a nifty mug that is both tattooed and pierced) and an archive of history articles organized glossary-style. Unfortunately the site search doesn’t work, but it’s still a good base of resources on tattoo.

They’ve got plans to develop a research and education center to house their collection and make it available to the general public. I wonder if they’ll need a “classically”-trained librarian and/or archivist…

Tags: checkitout