PORTSMOUTH, NH — Bray & Co.‘s Sunday, August 25 sale titled Tattoo, Circus, Sideshow, & Curiosities features 305 lots of historic tattoo material, with a claim that it represents the largest such grouping ever assembled for auction. The sale also includes sideshow materials that are currently red-hot in the auction marketplace. The complete catalog is now available for bidding at LiveAuctioneers.
The sale includes items from some of the foundational members of the 20th-century tattoo community, including the collections of Baltimore’s ‘Tattoo Charlie’ Geizer (1905-1980) and New York’s Darwin ‘Huck’ Spaulding (1928-2013).
The sale’s most-anticipated lot is a sideshow banner attributed to Snap Wyatt dating to around 1960. Titled Betty Broadbent Tattooed Lady ALIVE, the banner measures 106 by 116in. Broadbent (1909-1983) began having her body tattooed for exhibition at the age of 16, with the primary work done by Bowery artists Charlie Wagner and ‘Sailor Joe’ Van Hart. Broadbent spent four decades performing with some of the largest shows in the world, including Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey and Clyde Beatty Circus. Her popularity reached new heights in 1939, when, as a publicity stunt, she participated in a beauty pageant at the New York World’s Fair. Broadbent retired at the end of the 1967 season, and became the first person inducted into Lyle Tuttle’s Tattoo Hall of Fame. The banner that showcases her is estimated at $10,000-$15,000.
James Ho opened his first tattoo parlor, The Rose Tattoo, in Hong Kong in 1946 and stayed busy for decades, creating legendary art for American soldiers and sailors passing through the British colony. Tattooing had long been associated with criminals and Chinese triad gangs, but Ho’s work broadened its appeal and redefined the industry. This pattern book created by Ho dates to around 1957, just a year before his son Jimmy would open his now-legendary parlor in the Pearl of the Orient. The 20-page, double-sided book is estimated at $3,000-$5,000.
Amund Dietzel (1891-1974) was born in Norway and learned to tattoo while serving on merchant ships. After being shipwrecked off the coast of Quebec, Dietzel made his way to America, where he would eventually settle in Milwaukee. There, he built a steady clientele of sailors at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Dietzel built this Art Deco-style traveling tattoo trunk around 1925, and it went with him everywhere. Hand-made with reverse-painted glass panels and an electrified wood case, the cabinet is described by Bray as “among the most significant artifacts in the history of American tattooing.” It carries a sturdy $20,000-$30,000 estimate.
