What’s hanging on your walls – a nice print from Ikea, some arty photographs? Your granny’s tattoo? It may not have made it into Home & Gardens yet – but thanks to a Dutch entrepreneur, dead relatives’ tattoos could one day be household style statements.
Peter van der Helm, who owns Amsterdam’s Walls and Skin – a tattoo and a graffiti supplies shop – is offering a service that promises to preserve tattoos after their owners die, and allow them to be passed on as works of art.
More than 50 people have already signed up with the Foundation for the Art and Science of Tattooing, so that after their deaths, pathologists can remove the skin carrying their tattoo, pack it in formaldehyde and send it to a laboratory where the water and fat will be removed and replaced with silicone. They then become the property of the foundation, put on display or “loaned” to family and friends of the deceased.
On the foundation’s website, they point out people have different reasons for being attracted to the idea, ranging from “the emotional values of the tattoos, the interest in contributing to the history of tattooing, the preservation of the art piece or the artist’s work, and to leave behind a piece of yourself to friends and family after death”.
It may sound gruesome, but Matthew Lodder, an art historian at the University of Essex who is writing a book on the history of tattoos, has pointed out that preserving tattoos is nothing new – there are already collections at museums in Krakow, Tokyo and London. The difference is the foundation is ensuring the tattoos that are preserved are kept with the owner’s permission. Van der Helm, who set up the service a year ago, is particularly interested in preserving the works of talented tattoo artists.
As ever, Kate Moss was bang on trend – after Lucian Freud etched two swallows onto her back, she joked to Vanity Fair: “If it all goes horribly wrong, I could get a skin graft and sell it.” Now she can pass it on to future generations.
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