{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "stick-and-poke",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "Stick and poke",
  "aliases": [
   "hand-poke",
   "handpoke",
   "prison tattoo"
  ],
  "said": "A needle, a thread of pigment, and no machine"
 },
 "region": [
  "worldwide"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "family": "poke",
  "status": "living"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": 1970,
  "to": 2026,
  "label": "The contemporary hand-poke scene, and its prison ancestor"
 },
 "practice": {
  "method": "poke",
  "ink": "pen-ink",
  "placement": [
   "arms",
   "hands",
   "legs",
   "chest"
  ],
  "marked": "both",
  "marks": "either",
  "status": "living",
  "countries": [
   "US",
   "GB",
   "DE",
   "FR",
   "JP",
   "TH",
   "AU",
   "CA"
  ],
  "first_record": 1970,
  "note": "A sewing needle with thread wound round it, or a professional cartridge held in a stabiliser pen."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The one everybody has seen: a needle, ink, no machine — punk kitchens, prisons, and now studios that do nothing else.",
  "story": "Two lineages meet here and they are not the same thing. One is improvised: a sewing needle or a safety pin, ballpoint ink, done by a friend, associated with prisons and with people too young to be tattooed legally. The other is professional hand-poke, done with medical needles in a studio, which is now a standing style with its own practitioners.\n\n*Inference —* this site lists it as a tradition because it is one, and because the same word covers both ends of it. The difference between the two is not the method; it is whether the needle is sterile and whether the person holding it has been taught."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "แบบที่ทุกคนเคยเห็น เข็ม หมึก ไม่มีเครื่อง ทั้งในครัวพังก์ ในเรือนจำ และในร้านที่ทำแต่แบบนี้"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "machine",
   "as": "What it is defined against.",
   "rel": "method"
  },
  {
   "to": "what-counts",
   "as": "And the question that gets asked about it.",
   "rel": "issue"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Stick and poke",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stick_and_poke"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-stick-and-poke",
  "s:wp-prison-tattooing",
  "s:wp-russian-criminal-tattoos"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-stick-and-poke"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "tags": [
  "start-here"
 ],
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "stick-and-poke/stick-and-poke-404-sak-yant-tattoo-16.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16).jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
   "author": "Lychiang",
   "credit": "Own work",
   "alt": "404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16)",
   "date": "2006-04-29 15:50:54",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "f2da4554196e68afdf20c6aa8d5691b4b81d6a924fcbce6a851da7c2c70255dc"
  }
 ],
 "geo": {
  "lat": 51.5,
  "lon": -0.12,
  "precision": "region",
  "source": "s:commons"
 },
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "pen-ink",
   "type": "ink",
   "name": "Pen ink",
   "as": "Where it goes."
  }
 ]
}