After collecting tattoo related items over a period of 30 years, Brad Fink opened his own museum, a space dedicated permanently to the history of American tattooing in his New York studio, Daredevil. Like other tattooers before him, Brad is perpetuating a tradition among professionals who have always been careful about taking care of it. Especially when tattooing didn’t have the attention it has today from cultural institutions.
Thanks to people like Brad and Michelle Myles, his business partner and tattooer, these little museums are a permanent window opened to the people curious about history, not only of tattooing in New-York but also in America. If today, cultural institutions are more and more interested in surfing on the popularity of tattooing and making up dedicated exhibitions, still, they are ephemeral. At the Daredevil Tattoo Museum, tattooed and non-tattooed people have the opportunity to see, whenever they want to, rare and precious pieces of the past like tattoo machines, flashs from Bert Grimm, Samuel O’Reilly, Ace Harlyn, Cap Coleman, Sailor Jerry, the Moskowitz Brothers, photos of Charlie Wagner and Bowery tattooers… An exploration of the past with the timeless sound of the machines buzzing behind.
What does this collection represent to you?
These things are the soul of tattooing and the history that surrounds it and sums it up. When I started it was about the core and its origins, it felt really important to have stuff around me. My house is basically full of old stuff. My wife has a very different mentality, she doesn’t understand why I need this. To me, it’s like a security blanket, having it makes me feel comfortable. It embraces and it embodies what my life is, what Michelle’s life is.
When did you start your collection?
My first machine was given to me by Mitch, my mentor who taught me tattooing, probably in 1989-90. It was a personal “Jonesy” machine and signed by Earl Brown from Saint Louis, Missouri. I come from there. Mitch was a collector of WWII memorabilia, like sort of german-nazi-war type, he had this taste for antique. At that time I was still in high-school and all of a sudden, as I was tattooing, I had money. All of this was new to me and I wanted stuff, I needed stuff and I became an incurable collector. The collecting bug got me in general. Not only tattooing, whatever appealed to me, like sideshow banners. But tattooing stuff it is like anything else.
How did the idea of the museum come out?
When we first opened our shop in 1997 with Michelle, that neighborhood was typical old New York - coffee shops, bars… Throughout the years we got pushed out because of gentrification and we moved here seven blocks south in the present location. We knew that Chatham square was close from here and one day it really hit us, how significant emplacement that we are with tattooing. Martin Hildebrandt first set up his shop around 1858 several blocks from Chatham square, then O’Reilly came about. We’re right in the myth of American tattooing. We thought: “Why don’t we just put some display cases in here and display some of this collection?”
How important is it for you to share it?
All this stuff means nothing if it’s stacked in trunks. Last week, we had a high-school class coming, and that’s… huge! Can you imagine that? If I would have done this 20 years ago I guarantee you that we would not have the interest that we have today, because it was still looked at like an outsider thing, not even an art form; now it’s “folk art or whatever”, now it’s this high outsider art in a sense. Michelle did a fantastic map of locations and significant people of early tattooing. Martin Hildebrandt does not any longer exist but you can go to that exact spot and stand there. After 30 years of collecting, I feel like Michelle and myself we’re sort of keepers of this and now it’s become more important for us to be able to share it with other people.
Is this museum supposed to last?
We just got our museum status so now we’re able to be looked upon as a museum. Because we are, really. A lot of these objects are now owned by this non-profit status, they’re now protected. After I’m dead and gone, this museum is going to own these. Even though I’m not a museum curator, everything is documented, everything is archived; we’re trying our best to do it properly, there’s really no need for me to give or to sell this collection to what society thinks it’s a more legitimate museum. I don’t think it’s any less legitimate for me to call this a museum than the MET.
There are mixed opinions among tattooers towards institutions doing exhibitions about the tattoo culture, what do you think about it?
I think it’s great that they are doing exhibits. And is not a new thing, they already did in the past. I encourage it because it does nothing but publicize tattooing which is ultimately good for everybody, right now there’s more tattooers than there’s never been; it’s good business bottom line. Tattooing’s here, it’s not fast fashion, it’s way to permanent to be a fad. It has always found its place in society, even before the electric came about.
Which items hold a special place for you in your collection?
Each and every one of these things is so significant. Obviously the Edison pen is because, although he didn’t made it as a tattoo machine, it was used by early tattooers as a tattoo machine. At that time, during the industrial revolution there were many things -dental pluggers and other types of machines- but there were people smart enough to figure these things out, making their life easier. I’m from Saint Louis, Missouri, so Bert Grimm who had a shop there, is very significant and this image you see on the wall, right there, the “Sun Dance”, that’s the original “Sun Dance” that hang in Bert Grimm’s studio. Now, you see so many people that have that tattoo on them. I also have the original “Rock of Ages” from the same studio, and the original “garden of Eden”; I have original pigment cans that Bert used.
And the things you like the most?
The O’Reilly’s. Those came from O’Reilly’s sketchbooks, there’s only been one known to exist. I have a painting that Lew the Jew Alberts did. I can look at each of these items and something may be visually stimulating. I’m just lucky that I was able to acquire very significant items that tell a story of our lives. It’s my livelyhood and it’s such a deep art form. It’s so fucking permanent but it’s not, it really is such a huge heavy form of art. And that’s what I don’t get about these stuffy sort of conservative old white men that are on these boards of these high academic museums, I don’t get their mentality. Because what else can you do that is so permanent, that’s gonna be wherever you take it? It’s gonna travel with you and nobody can take it from you, the IRS can’t take it from you, nobody can steal it right? It’s permanent but when you’re dead it’s gone. Unless you’re in Japan and they make a fucking lamp out of you. http://www.daredeviltattoo.com/museum/
