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ARTISTVarious Artists
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AUTHORNick York
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PAGES64
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BINDINGSoftcover
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SIZE8" x 10"
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WEIGHT0.65 lbs
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CONTENTTattoo history, photos and flash images
Floating West is a full-scale reproduction of a rare book of Japanese tattoo designs painted around 1900 by an anonymous artist on the silk pages of a small handmade volume. The designs include dragons, geishas, eagles fighting snakes in midair, cranes in flight and a spider waiting in its web.
Within a decade the book had found its way to an Arkansas farmer and amateur tattooer who never traveled beyond the South Central states - a mystery that the illustrated essay by collector Nick York explores in detail. The 64-page softcover reproduces the original in its entirety alongside that history and photographs.
For tattooers, it is a source of early Japanese tattoo flash rarely seen outside private collections; for historians and collectors, it is a strange and fascinating object that shows how far tattoo imagery traveled at the turn of the century.
