VERY RARE 1989 BOB, (Robert "Moose" Rutter}, Pittsburgh PA, Paul Rogers, Roy Orbison, Tattoo Flash Sheet. Laminated, High Quality Copy.
Measures Roughly 11X17" (Inches).
READY FOR DISPLAY, IN ANY TATTOO SHOP, ART COLLECTION, OR TATTOO MUSEUM!
Old School, Vintage Style Tattoo Flash.
Would Look Great Matted Framed!
PLEASE SEE PICTURES FOR CONDITION.
WHAT A WONDERFUL RARE PIECE OF TATTOO HISTORY!!!!!!!
This is a great piece of Artwork to display in your shop, or a proud addition to any collection!
This is a great investment for any Tattoo Shop or Art Collector!
Will Ship FLAT, Priority Mail. I WILL COMBINE SHIPPING ON MULTIPLE ITEMS!
In the 70’s, the tattoo scene on California’s West Coast was hoppin, but
over on the East Coast, specifically here in Pennsylvania, it was just
Hank Savini, Duke Miller, and Moose. Then Red moved in from Florida and
Nick came out of New York and opened a shop in the Rocks. Today, only a
few of them remain; Hank, who’s now in his 90’s, Animal, though he’s
since quit, Nick Bubash, and Duke, who this past year celebrated 40
years of tattooing. When Duke was a young man, around 16 years old, he
spent most of his time outside of school making money working on farm
equipment or working on cars in a garage. Soon after graduation he went
to work at the steel mill. But for him, it was more like working in
prison. Everyone stayed in their own little corner of the mile-long
building, not allowed to leave without a signed pass. He felt like a
slave, less than human, and was treated worse than when in school. It
was then that he realized he needed to figure out a way to not work for
“The Man”, which is how it all started. Duke quit working at the mill in
1976, which is also the year he started tattooing. He could draw and
paint anything but at that point in time, no one was taking apprentices,
heck apprenticeships weren’t even a thing back then. Tattooing was like
a secret society- you had to find your own way in. “The mind is a
powerful thing, if you decide what you want to do or be, you can do
that. So, I thought, I’m doing something, and tattooing was the coolest
art form I had ever seen in person. When I got to see it I was like, I’m
in.”
The first tattoo Duke ever did was on a close friend of his, two hearts
and a ribbon with his wife’s name on it. Soon enough he started working
under Bob “Moose” Rutter. At that time, Bob was going to Art School
during the day, and didn’t have money to pay the rent on his tattoo
shop. One day Duke ran into him, after tattooing a little bit, and Bob
goes “Hey man, I need 60$ to pay the rent at the tattoo shop. If you got
$60, you’re in.” Duke didn’t have the money so he borrowed $60 (which
was big money back then) from 3 or 4 friends, and that’s how he got
started building his legacy. Duke would tattoo all day while Bob was at
school, then he’d come back, they’d eat dinner, and Bob would show him
everything he was taught at art school, so essentially Duke got a free
art class.
Duke traveled around with the carnival for roughly 10 years, tattooing
and working some of the sideshows; laying on the bed of nails, walking
on broken glass, etc. In the winter, all the carnies would go to
Gibsonton, FL where they would repair rides, and Duke would repaint all
the sideshow signs. During the season, they would travel from Florida
all the way out to Ohio/Indiana, and then work their way back to
Florida. In the summers, Duke tattooed every weekend, he would sometimes
do 150 $20 tattoos in a day. At the Butler Fair, Duke and Red would
tattoo starting at 10 am and on Friday’s they’d tattoo all night.
Saturday’s, they would go until 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes it’d be
a $50 tattoo, sometimes an $80 one, which, back then, was the
equivalent of $800. They would walk out of there sometimes with
$7,000/$8,000 but thanks to their lifestyle by the next weekend they’d
have to borrow money to pay the rent!
Since his days as a Carny, things in the tattoo industry have changed
quite a bit. Though the machines Duke uses are still the same, just two
magnetic coils, the inks have changed tremendously. Years ago, they were
using things like candy cotton dye, stuff with no pigment that the
blood could take right out of the skin. Today they know how to grind
down the pigments to a specific size so they stay better and give more
vibrant colors. And thankfully the old guard is no longer telling the
competing newcomers to put urine in the ink to make it brighter. Another
big change is the way the image is transferred to skin. Nowadays,
tattoo artists use transfer paper to transfer the design to the skin and
once it’s on there, it’s nearly impossible to wipe off. The old way of
transferring was to use stencils made of pieces of thin, flexible
acetate plastic. You would take a needle the size of a screwdriver and
scratch whatever design you were doing into the plastic. Then you’d take
some black powdered ink, rub it into the grooves, put on a thin coat of
anything sticky, primarily ointment, on top of it, and it would suck
all the black out, thus transferring the image. You had to be extremely
careful when starting the tattoo to not smudge or touch the transfer, or
your stencil would be gone.
Duke still has some of his original stencils and every now and then will
bring them to the tattoo conventions with him: Not to sell. He lines
them up and tells younger tattoo artists that he’ll tattoo one of the
stencils on them and they can keep the stencil. The last time he went,
he only gave out 6 or so before he packed them up. Even though Duke’s
presence at a convention causes quite a stir, he still sees himself as
just one of the boys. “I just want to hang out with the guys. I’m
honored that they look up to me, but I don’t get it, I’m just a dude
havin fun.”
In all reality, it was Duke and the other artists of his time who paved
the way in the tattoo industry to make it an acceptable art form. They
fought hard against the government for years to make things work. He,
Tim, Animal, and Moose would go down to Harrisburg, and meet with the
congressmen, and those that were trying to pass tattoo restriction laws.
As much as they could, Duke and the other artists tried to educate the
younger guys as well. They’d have meetings where the old guys would sit
at a table with the young guys and talk. He’d tell them to pay
attention, cause if it happened again they were on their own. In the
beginning, tattoos clearly weren’t widely accepted. Treatment of tattoo
artists by the “straights” back in the 70’s was pretty harsh. “Oh, we
were the freaks. It started in the heyday of pot and protests. I used to
go to DC to the smokeouts, where we sat on the lawn of the White House
and smoked dope. Timothy Leary would be there, Andy Warhol would be
there, Abbie Hoffman would be there. They were the spokespeople for
those things. And hey, I sold acid to all of them. People would just
come by and go “what a bunch of f#@kin freaks!” and we thought “yeah we
are!” and we dug it. And that’s where it came from.”
In the 80’s shops became nicer. Shop owners realized if you had a nice
shop, you got better clientele. Older folks started to get tattoos too.
Marty Holcombs was the first good artist in the Tri-State area, who
could do really beautiful artwork, not just tattoos. He was getting
doctors, lawyers, and other professional people in his shop. Marty still
paints today. When the 90’s rolled around, tattoo magazines came out.
There was one called Tattoo, and one called Skin Deep, then everybody
was seeing them, and everybody had to have a tattoo. When the magazines
first came out and needed to make money to continue publishing, the
little guys that were trying to sell tattoo equipment would put ads in.
In 2000 the Japanese came out with $12.50 tattoo machines, and were
selling poorly made ink for next to nothing. All of a sudden, everybody
has a tattoo machine and everybody thought they were a tattoo artist. In
terms of the culture, many people think that Ink Masters and shows like
that really depict what it’s like to be a tattoo artist today.
As for Duke, he knows the truth. He feels the shows are too misleading,
because nobody really knows what’s going on there; it’s scripted for TV.
They’re not really doing that big giant tattoo in 4 hours like they say
they are, it’s just not happening. Although Duke could do a tattoo that
they’d take 10 hours to do, in 2. Like everyone else, Duke has his
limitations. For instance, he doesn’t do portraits, “I’m not makin’ your
wife pretty, if she’s got a cross eye, she’s gonna get a cross eye in
her portrait, so I don’t touch those things.” He prefers the old-school
stuff, which is all he did back in the day. “I’m capable of a lot of
cool things, I’ll do some cool things that ain’t my style, but others
it’s like ehh, and I’ll pass it along to one of the other boys in the
shop.
Today, Duke spends his time in his newest shop, Old Skool Tattoos,
creating the same incredible artwork he started 40 years ago. It is
truly aweinspiring to think that this man has been an active part of the
tattooing community for 40 years. He has seen the rise and fall of
politicians, watched the world change right before his eyes. Experienced
four decades of awful fashion and terrible hairstyles, all the while he
remained unchanged. Duke’s artwork has stood the test of time and even
today, his art is still just as clean and bold as it was when he first
picked up a machine. Duke, to me, is an inspiration for artists
everywhere. He wanted to do something more in life and instead of
sitting around and waiting for things to happen, he went out and
achieved it. And at a time when tattoos had just been legalized only a
few years prior and were still too taboo to even be talked about. His
hard work and dedication to the art form will surely be noted for
generations to come. When asked what advice he would give the newcomers
his answer was simple; “Respect…just gain a bit of respect, for
themselves and the people they work with and learn from.” If you want to
know more about Duke, see some of his art, get tattooed by the legend
himself, or head to the shop for some ink therapy, head over to
https://www.facebook. com/TheOldSkoolTattooing/
Here’s to Duke, 40 years under his belt and another 20 to go.-CycleSource
Since his days as a Carny, things in the tattoo industry have changed
quite a bit. Though the machines Duke uses are still the same, just two
magnetic coils, the inks have changed tremendously. Years ago, they were
using things like candy cotton dye, stuff with no pigment that the
blood could take right out of the skin. Today they know how to grind
down the pigments to a specific size so they stay better and give more
vibrant colors. And thankfully the old guard is no longer telling the
competing newcomers to put urine in the ink to make it brighter. Another
big change is the way the image is transferred to skin. Nowadays,
tattoo artists use transfer paper to transfer the design to the skin and
once it’s on there, it’s nearly impossible to wipe off. The old way of
transferring was to use stencils made of pieces of thin, flexible
acetate plastic. You would take a needle the size of a screwdriver and
scratch whatever design you were doing into the plastic. Then you’d take
some black powdered ink, rub it into the grooves, put on a thin coat of
anything sticky, primarily ointment, on top of it, and it would suck
all the black out, thus transferring the image. You had to be extremely
careful when starting the tattoo to not smudge or touch the transfer, or
your stencil would be gone.