Lyle Tuttle

Lyle Gilbert Tuttle (born October 7, 1931, in Chariton, Iowa; died March 2019 in Ukiah, California) was an American tattoo artist and historian widely known as the Father of Modern Tattooing. Raised in Ukiah, he received his first tattoo at age fourteen on a trip to San Francisco and began tattooing professionally in 1949, apprenticing under the veteran tattooist Bert Grimm at the Pike in Long Beach before opening his own San Francisco studio in 1954 and, in 1960, the celebrated shop on 7th Street he ran for nearly three decades. Working in the classic American traditional style, he became the public face of tattooing during its late 1960s and 1970s resurgence, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone in October 1970 and tattooing figures such as Janis Joplin, Cher, Joan Baez, the Allman Brothers, and Paul Stanley; his work on Joplin was widely credited with helping popularize tattooing among women. Beyond the needle he was a devoted historian of the craft, assembling what is described as the world's largest collection of tattoo artifacts and opening one of the first tattoo museums in the United States, and in 2014 he became the first person to tattoo on all seven continents. Tuttle retired in 1990 but remained tattooing's most visible ambassador until his death at the age of 87, and his collection continues to preserve the history he devoted his life to documenting.