Stick

Like hardly any other craft, the art of tattooing is bound up with the cultural history of the Marshall Islands and their inhabitants. The earliest witness reports from Spanish visitors already mention the practice and even use it as a description for the Marshallese people (“Los Pintados” - the Painted Ones). In his travel diary from 1817, Adelbert von Chamisso describes the body art patterns, in particular how they differ according to age and gender. In one of her final texts dating from 1902, Antonie Brandeis also described tattooing, pointing to its transformation under European influence: “A man’s body is extensively tattooed, whereas in the case of women, only the neck and arms are tattooed. This custom is going out of use more and more, as the body is increasingly clothed and thus the purpose of tattooing, as bodily ornament, becomes irrelevant.” Small wooden sticks of this kind are used in the process - which she describes as very painful - in order to punch patterns into the skin. Sticks of this kind were subsequently applied with colour. Antonie Brandeis also documented countless patterns photographically. Author: Godwin Kornes, Translation: Timothy Connell