Maud stevens wagner biography

Maud Stevens Wagner — was the first known female tattoo artist in the United States.

Maud wagner tattoos

Emerging from a subculture of circus performers and other outsider artists, the heavily tattooed Wagner was not the first American woman to be tattooed, but she was probably the first to practice the art herself. Once out on her own, she became a contortionist and a trapeze artist, traveling around the country and performing at county and state fairs, circuses, vaudeville shows, and amusement arcades that might offer anything from family-oriented events to rowdier fare.

A larger fair at the time might feature tattooed men and women from countries around the world where body art was indigenous to the culture—people from such cultures, especially women, were presented as exotic specimens for the entertainment of Americans who knew little of the meanings of tattoos in the cultures where they were used.

In Maud and her fellow circus artists converged on St. Louis, Missouri, which promised to provide abundant employment at official events and sideshows: the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was scheduled to run for seven months and to draw millions of attendees final attendance approached 20 million. There, she met Gus Wagner — , a tattoo artist whose life story was even more colorful than most.

Wagner had joined the merchant marine at age 15 and traveled around the world. He had numerous tattoos himself, and he told Maud that he had acquired them on the islands of Java and Borneo now part of Indonesia , where local tattoo artists had shown him how to ink tattoos by hand, using only ink and sharp, clean needles.

Maud wagner tattoo flash

Wagner asked Stevens for a date and she agreed, on the condition that he teach her the art of tattooing. Wagner agreed and the date involved a tattoo given to Wagner's apprentice and soon-to-be girlfriend. Photographed at the height of her career, Maud had most of her body covered with tattoos, and those were apparently done by Wagner; a photo of the couple shows him tattooing his wife.

When Maud began doing tattoos herself, she continued to use the hand tattooing technique even after electric tattoo machines became available. Meanwhile, with the fair as a backdrop, the romance between Wagner and Maud Stevens seems to have developed quickly: they were married on October 3, Tattoo art was often a precarious way to make a living, but during the fair Maud and Gus Wagner prospered.