Nell Carrow and Ross Deakin took the back room of a failing print shop on Jamaica Street in the spring of 2014, on the basis that it had a sink, a window and a landlord who did not ask many questions. They worked two chairs between them for three years. The print shop closed in 2017 and they took the front as well, which is why the counter is still standing on the tiles the printers laid and why the ceiling in the back is two feet lower than the ceiling at the front.
There are six of us now, plus whoever is in the guest chair. We are not a walk-in-and-be-seen kind of shop for most of the week — the residents' books run weeks out, which is what happens when everything is drawn for one person. Thursday to Saturday the front chair is flash and walk-ins, and that is deliberate: it is how almost everyone gets their first tattoo, including most of us.
What we care about, in the order we argue about it: that the line holds in ten years, that you knew the price before you paid anything, and that nobody leaves with something they were talked into.
Each artist sets their own rate and runs their own books. Some cards show the artist and some show their drawings, which is roughly how they would each prefer to be introduced.
Bold traditional · lettering · cover-ups
Co-founder. Twelve years tattooing, six of them in this room. Nell will tell you when a design is too small to hold its lines for twenty years, and she is usually right about it. Takes on more cover-ups than anyone here.
Blackwork · ornamental · geometric
Co-founder. Draws banding and ornamental work freehand onto the limb before a stencil goes anywhere near it, because a pattern printed flat will not meet itself around an arm. Slower than everyone. Nothing wanders.
Japanese · large-scale · irezumi
Works almost entirely in backpieces and sleeves, booked as runs of full days six weeks apart. Will not start a sleeve unless you have agreed the whole design first — half a dragon is worse than no dragon.
Fine line · script · single-needle
Takes more first tattoos than the rest of the shop put together, and is the reason we have a mirror in the back as well as the front. Books reopen for October on the first Monday of September.
Black-and-grey · realism · portraits
Nine magnums and a lot of patience. Priya takes four clients a week and no more, which is why her waiting list is what it is. Portraits only from photographs you own.
Flash · small traditional · apprentice
Third year of a four-year apprenticeship under Nell, and on the walk-in chair Thursday to Saturday. Everything Joss does is checked before it starts and looked at after it finishes. Cheapest way into a good tattoo in this shop.
Residencies of one to four weeks
One station kept free all year for visiting artists — 41 of them since 2014, from Rotterdam, Lisbon, Leeds and once, memorably, from a van in the car park. Guests set their own rates and take their own bookings; we register every one of them with the council before they pick a machine up, not after.
"If somebody walks out because we told them the number and the number was too much, that is a good day. The bad day is the one where they find out in the chair."
Nell Carrow · co-founder
A guest spot is a visiting artist taking a station for a week or a month. It is how styles move between shops, how newer artists build a following outside their own city, and how you get tattooed by somebody from Lisbon without going to Lisbon.
Guests are announced four weeks ahead on the board by the door and on the studio's Instagram. They book through us, they set their own rate, and their deposit terms are ours — so if a residency is cancelled you are dealing with the shop, not chasing somebody who has gone home.
In August: Ilse Renner, hand-poked ornamental, Rotterdam, until the 23rd. In September: the chair is open — send us a portfolio.
We open at eleven because tattooing at nine in the morning is a bad idea for everybody involved. The shop is closed on Mondays and the phone is not answered then — email is, usually.
Eat something before your appointment and bring a drink, especially for a full day. Wear something that gets at the placement without you having to take more off than you want to. If you have been drinking, we will rebook you and keep the deposit, and we will not argue about it — alcohol thins blood, blood pushes ink out, and the tattoo would be worse.
The front of the shop is a working room with sharps in it. One guest each, no children, no dogs. There is a bench by the window and a kettle behind the counter, and nobody minds if you sit for twenty minutes deciding.
Tell us which artist, what you want, roughly where and roughly how big. Everything else we can work out between us.
