December 29, 2013

Peter van der Helm wants your tattoo when you are dead

Filed under: Art,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:55 pm

poster-harbour-amsterdam-facemeplsA tattoo artist from Amsterdam is offering a service of preserving your tattoos after you die, Mirror reports:

Tattoo shop owner Peter van der Helm says around 30 clients have already agreed to donate their skin to his company, the “Walls and Skin” tattoo parlour, after they die and have each paid a few hundred euro to have their inked designs made immortal.

After their deaths, a pathologist will remove the tattoo to freeze or package in it formaldehyde – ideally within 48 hours – before it is sent to a lab for a procedure to extract water and replace it with silicone.

Van der Helm told Parool that he got the idea because of Johnny Depp who is supposed to have said that his body should go to a museum after his death. The tattoo artist says “I am so going to get into trouble with this. I’ve practically talked to everybody these past months, the Netherlands Forensic Institute, lawyers, the health department, but nobody gave me a straight answer [about the legality of preserving tattoos].”

To take your order the Walls and Skin parlour requires a hand written letter in which you state you want your tattoo to be preserved by them and displayed in future expositions.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

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