Tony D'Annessa is an older gentleman that tattoos at PSC in Montreal. According to him, he's the oldest and longest-working tattooer in Canada (about 53 years). Back in March I was in Montreal with a friend and had the pleasure of meeting and getting tattooed by Tony. At first he was all business and rather quiet. The small hummingbird flash I'd selected to fill an awkward space on my arm only took about 30 minutes from start to finish. After the tattoo was done I asked to take a picture and then Tony really opened up; told me a lot of interesting stories and showed me a bunch of cool stuff around his office. I think I stayed for about an hour just chatting. I won't recount all of it here because it would take forever and I want to leave some mystery... but I will describe the pictures.
But before I start here are some neat links...
* There's a bio of Tony on the PSC website (I think I know what book it's scanned from but I'm not positive so I'll save myself the potential embarrassment of giving wrong information...):
* And I also found this nice interview from TAM:
OK.
So here's Tony and me and my triple chins.
So here's Tony and me and my triple chins.
Just finishing up. (Good thing he worked fast because this was a really uncomfortable position to hold my arm! Ha!)
There's a lot of cool stuff around Tony's work space.
Tony's dad worked as a commercial artist doing fancy flourishes and filigree stuff. Tony does this stuff too but I think he said his dad did this one. Beautiful!
This book was on his shelf! It's from 1958. I've tried to find this book a few times - used copies are still available - if you want to pay over $300!
If you go to the articles I linked to you will learn the story of the flash sheets on the roller blinds (after tattooing went underground in NYC). That huge sheet on the wall behind Tony is one of those very sheets!
Tony was kind enough to show me a lot of his drawings and also some scrap books. Here he is with some newspaper clippings of himself.
The young Tony/Henry
I thought it was really cool to see the picture of his forearm tattoo in his youth and as it is now (you can click on them to see them bigger). Tony said he got tattooed when he first started working and never since then. So his tattoos are all over 50 years old now. Some of them have nearly disappeared!
Another really neat thing was seeing all the old hand-cut acetates. Here's a cool Hot Stuff Devil.
I never quite understood how these things worked so Tony was kind enough to demonstrate. I chose one of my favourite old designs - the little boxer boy.
First, put some graphite dust on the acetate...
...and some vaseline on the spot to be tattooed...
...then stick the acetate on there...
... then work from the bottom-up and be careful not to swipe the image away (which can easily happen, as shown here)!!
(Part of me really wanted him to finish the job... but... I'm not quite ready for hand tattoos yet.)
This is the flash sheet that I picked my tattoo from. I didn't go in knowing what I would get, I just knew I wanted something small to fill a weird spot. I've never been that casual about a tattoo before.
And here's the sweet little hum-dinger I walked away with!! I'm pleased as punch with it and can't believe how perfectly it fit in there!
Thanks as always for making it to the end of another post! If you want to get tattooed by an old-timer, you know where you can do it! Be sure to check out the work of the other guys at PSC!!
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