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Scott and Shanes annual inksmith and rogers xmas party roadtrip


shaneenholm

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So Scott Sterling and I went on another roadtrip. This time of year it is always to Inksmith and Rogers to stay with the Wilsonian Institute of Tattooing...ah..I mean Mike Wilson. Always a good time. But this trip was especially eye opening because we went to Augusta Georgia to Interview Jennie and Ledann Peace. The legacy of Tex and Ann Peace of Portsmith Va.

Cap Coleman finished tattooing working for Tex and Ann and Scott and had met Jennie and Ledann last summer at the augusta convention we did with Mike and Angelo last year.

Jennie has been tattooing since 1971 when Tex broke her in. It is a great story i will tell or rather she will tell in full detail in the interview,but the basics are she showed up to work instead of Ledann one day and asked Tex and Ann to teach her,Tex lined up some stewbums and said "free tattoos" she did 3 of those,then they went to half price,for three more then full price,she did 25 tattoos the first day and that was it...off and running.

She still tattoos without caps on her machines basically because Tex told her they were useless,she also is a prolific flash painter, mostly colored pencil like Coleman and Paul, but Tex would circle the designs he wanted done out of the back of the Spaulding catalog and Jennie would use a magnifying glass, and they are just beautiful. It was almost like stepping into a time machine back to the early 80s...Really impressive,.......the state of tattooing is beyond tainted when it went from one shop in augusta to over 40 now...So sad...but she is still tattooing although the Peace Family shop closed earlier in the year after 40 years open,she is working at alliance ink now....You would be doing yourself a favor to get a tattoo from her,both Scott and I got one,using two supremes from 30 years ago.

They had been working off acetates until about 3 years ago,when they went to the green bay convention and got hipped on thermofaxes...With so many kids now trying to be traditional tattooers it gets no more traditional then Jennie Peace.

I will post some pics later..I am at the shop now and do not have the right cord to download from my phone.

Of course Inksmith and Rogers are family so the trip they was great as always everyone working there is smokin,please watch for Eric Inksmiths interview in TAM, also Jennie and Ledann Peaces...I also have a great article coming out in Penthouse "The Penthouse Guide to picking a tattooer or how not to be a dummy hanging on the dummy rail"

I tattooed the editor for penthouse on during my trip to NYC with Bob Roberts in october...they got weak and hired me to write one.

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i was at work when i wrote this today so i forgot a few things......some interesting things were Tex would not let anything with the # 13 in his shop. So there was no #13 flash...no # 13 drawer,or set up etc....Jennie did a # 13 sheet upon Texs death in 1992...it is a copy of a crowe sheet..the one with the rebel flag draped reaper..i bought it from her because i thought that was too cool.

also the bathrooms used to say "Men" and "Ann"(for the womens) I looked through their logbooks and like on one day it was panther, panther, Panther, eagle,devil with wings, dagger, panther , eagle, eagle, eagle, eagle it was just endless.

people that see them at conventions may see their coleman machines and othr stuff they have. One of the frames they had I knew was a coleman but people had misidentified it as a Zies victory. Actually paul rogers had made Rollo a liner out of one of these frames and Paul told Mike it was a Coleman.I think perhaps Huck made the frames for coleman,because huck was close with coleman and stayed close until coleman drown.In fact there is a liteweight Coleman rebuilt for huck up at the Spaulding compound,I think we have a tendency to think of Coleman in the 20s 30s and 40s but he was around much later than that. though they closed him down in 1950 or 51. He went to work after a short retirement at the peaces shop in portsmouth. So ledann who remembers Coleman when he was a kid is one of the last living links to Coleman. Huck Spaulding is still alive but in no condition to talk anymore.

As sailor jerry said in a letter to ed hardy if you wanted a coleman tattoo huck was the one you should go to...(not to get too sidetracked but Huck got a bad rap because of how open he was selling tattoo stuff but he pales in comparison with what people are doing today)

most of the flash that was colemans that we see today has huck or pauls writing on the back that sez "this is colemans"...very few sheets were signed...i dont think he tripped on it too much as he made flash to sell designs not as fine art.we saw quite a few sheets Coleamn did while he worked at the peaces...(a few sheets can be bought if you contact me)

We dug through boxes of acetates,alot celluloid, alot of Colemans grimshaws etc...It was amazing...I remeber thinking about when i got my first tattoo down at the pike 30 years ago the designs were very similar to the ones jennie was drawing with the magnifying glass and scott and i both said we would have picked from them years ago. Anyway just an added note this christmas eve

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Good write and it sounds like good times Shane.

Just got off the phone with LeDan to let him know about the post and he's callin Jennie to have her check it out. The pic's are great and Scott is lookin better than ever, time has been good to him.

Just to correct a couple things though, the shop Jennie is workin from is Allegiance Ink Tattoo and not alliance and the old shop location was occupied just 4 months short of 50 years instead of 40.

The interview will be great! So much history! Tex, Ann and the kids were everywhere, shops(plural) in Portsmouth, even a time in Chicago when the likes of Sparrow and Thomas were there, just an amazing history.

When I hit my 30th anniversary with Hawk's Tattoos it was the Peace Families 75th in 2009 so I celebrated by flyin down to Georgia to see and visit as my own reward, gotta show respect to the Gods of tattooing and it was bountiful.

Thanks for the pic's and can't wait to read the interview, guaranteed to be a good one.

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Awesome! I love this forum mostly for the history lessons, and gallery. Great read and reminder that tattooing is so much a part of American history and culture.

At least Electric tattooing.

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Man, I met Ledann in Bakersfield with their son. Timmy Tatts called me up to their hotel room. I walked into a pile of original Eddie Peace Flash......Old hinged brass tubes, a pile of envelope art from Doc Webb to Eddie...................Machines like you wouldn't believe. Everything was in plastic, I found a beautiful Paul Rogers on Waters 6 frame, with a strut bar welded on......double wrapped green fish tape coils.........I wish I had the loot. Well Ledann is one of the coolest cat's I have ever met. We all had dinner and connected our booths at the show. I got a Wagner frame, Two sheets of Eddie Peace flash, and traded Ledanns son his knuckles for a flash book. Great family. The photo album was killer. Eddie Peace was in a band called the "Wandering Playboys".

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