Traditional ship tattoos displayed the boats as both practical and metaphorical for the sailors. It’s likely that so many of them choose the design because of its see-it-a-mile-away, tough-guy aesthetic, but some people think it’s because the dense shading of the design made a perfect cover-up.

Panther tattoos were at their highest popularity during the ‘50s and ‘60s, when soldiers and greasers alike got tattoos of the predator during World War II. This is tattooed to give the appearance of the panther crawling across the wearer’s skin. One of, if not the most popular, is the crawling panther. In the traditional tattoo world, there has been a variety of ways the panther was depicted. He would draw their claws red, often bloody, open jaws and occasionally in the company of a naked woman.Īmong other meanings are guardianship, freedom and courage.

Sailor Jerry was famous for his panther tattoos, representing these animals particularly ferocious and masculine. Traditional panther tattoos are usually done as totems of prowess and virility, with an added element of symbolizing a connectedness to nature.

He refined his style through sheer mastery of the creative techniques into what we reverence as traditional style today. With time, tattoos remained within a small section of the spectrum of American culture: Homeless sailors and circus freaks.Īnd as the various classes of American men united at Honolulu’s intersection during the war, there was a tattoo shop run by a heavily tattooed former Navy man named Sailor Jerry. Captain James Cook and the crew were inspired by their travels in the East and began to tattoo each other to share their travel stories. The first to follow the art were those who wanted to escape the limitations of society in search of something else. Such pieces imbue their bearers with the same ideas from which they were born: a rejection of mainstream culture and the search for a new identity with the revival of traditional style tattoos. After World War II, the tattooed hero, Norman Collins aka Sailor Jerry pioneered this popular style in Hawaii which was the crossroads for millions of American men at the time.

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