Fort Bragg’s Triangle Tattoo & Museum tells the history of tattoos

“People used to faint to see a tattooed person,” says Mr. G with a grin, gesturing at a pair of black-and-white photographs on the wall.

The photos show a female circus performer whose ink-covered body shocked audiences in the 1920s and '30s. Today, her chest and back tattoos would hardly raise an eyebrow.

Mr. G and Madame Chinchilla, as they're known professionally and personally, are tattoo artists and historians who have been collecting stories, photos, artifacts and original “flash” - hand-drawn tattoo designs - since 1986. The couple runs Triangle Tattoo & Museum in Fort Bragg, a working studio and museum that invites the curious to climb a cherry-red staircase and step back into tattoo history.

One of only a few tattoo museums in the world, it is recommended in guide books alongside attractions like Glass Beach and the Guest House Museum. In 2011, the museum was included in the New York Times' “36 Hours on the Mendocino Coast.” The couple's labor of love has earned a number of accolades over the years, including the National Tattoo Association's “Nicest Studio Award.”

Madame Chinchilla and Mr. G compare their museum to a “bizarre reference library.” The collection is organized into exhibits, tracing tattoo culture through groups like the Maori, Native American tribes, sailors and the military, circus performers, motorcycle clubs and prisoners. The museum even has a section on forced tattoos, or those given without consent, with examples of tattooed prisoners, soldiers and slaves dating back to ancient Persia and the Roman Empire.

“We're all about enriching people's insight and sparking their curiosity,” said Madame Chinchilla, an artist and documentarian who has written seven books on tattooing.

Tracing their history

Both Mr. G and Madame Chinchilla said they have long been fascinated by the tattoo artists who trained them, and by the earlier artists who trained their teachers.

“I keep track of my lineage,” said Mr. G. “I know that my teacher learned from this teacher and he learned from this teacher, and so on.”

Madame Chinchilla first met Mr. G through mutual friends in 1986. Soon, the couple were inseparable, and Mr. G moved down from Seattle, where he worked as a carpenter. With a thick mustache and visible tattoos, Mr. G said he drew suspicion from local law enforcement.

“When we started out, everyone thought I was a criminal,” he said. “For the first year, I was pulled over like a thousand times. Every branch of the police would try to run me through the computer because I had all of these tattoos.”

Mr. G landed an apprenticeship with Bert Rodriguez, a Mexican-American tattoo artist who had started a Santa Rosa studio in 1978. While Mr. G was learning the ropes from Rodriguez, Madame Chinchilla was busy “documenting everything” with a VHS video camera. Soon after, she also began training to become a tattoo artist.

Holding a Chihuahua with pink-streaked fur, Madame Chinchilla flipped through several books she has produced with Mr. G, including a biography of their friend and mentor Capt. Don Leslie. A tattooed circus performer, sword swallower and talker, Leslie was a colorful character whose connection to tattoos started in 1955.

“He was a talker for the sideshow,” Mr. G said. “So when there was a delay or he needed to fill time, he would tell all kinds of stories about the tattoos on his body, just make things up. He was a good storyteller.”

A colorful blur

In the early years, Triangle Tattoo was one of the few tattoo shops operating north of San Francisco. Mr. G said many Humboldt State students found out that the studio was college- friendly and started making the three-hour drive from Arcata for appointments.

“We were the only shop between Santa Rosa and Portland, Oregon,” he said. “There were two shops in Sacramento. But on this 101 corridor, there was no one until Portland.”

Tattoos had not yet reached mainstream acceptance, but the studio was booming in the early '90s. Mr. G said the couple used an influx of money to buy the antique tattoo machines, rare flash art and other relics that now line the museum walls.

Madame Chinchilla and Mr. G have met thousands of people through their careers. In 1992, the couple traveled to Japan to visit two respected tattoo artists and friends. The artists treated them to extravagant dinners and hand-poke tattoos with special wooden tools. Those tools are now encased in an exhibit on Japanese tattoo culture.

One memory stands out for Madame Chinchilla. She recalls a day in the early '90s when she gave her mother, then 76 years old, her first tattoo. The moment was captured by a Discovery Channel crew filming for a documentary on tattoo culture.

Madame Chinchilla said, “It was the first tattooing that had ever been televised.”

The here and now

Mr. G still works by appointment in his private studio, but artist Niki Needles shoulder most of the studio's walk-in work these days.

Madame Chinchilla, who is in remission from breast cancer, no longer gives tattoos.

On a sunny afternoon in January near the end of a guided tour, she paused to consider how the studio and tattooing have changed over the last 33 years. She said customers often find a design they like online and bring it into the studio.

“A majority of people come with their phone and show us exactly what they want,” she said. “A lot of [the designs] are the same. I like that, because it's marking a time in history … They are living totally in the here and now. That's what we've always been striving for, since the '60s. The here and now.”