https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/2026-09-19T00:00:00Zhttps://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/ainu-anchi-piri/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Hokkaido and Sakhalin: a woman's mouth ringed with indigo, begun in childhood and widened until she was ready to marry.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/amazigh-marks/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

North Africa: women's chin, forehead and hand marks, in a geometric vocabulary shared with weaving and pottery.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/atayal-ptasan/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Taiwan: a band down the forehead, and a second mark earned — by a man for taking a head, by a woman for mastering the loom.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/batok/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Philippine traditions, tapped with a hafted thorn at ninety to a hundred and twenty strikes a minute.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/chin-ming/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Women's faces, marked between fifteen and twenty, in a pattern that names the tribe: full-face, part-face, dots, lines, or both.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/coptic-pilgrim/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Jerusalem and Egypt: a cross on the inside of the wrist, marking a pilgrimage — and a family that has been doing it for around seven hundred years.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/deq/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Kurdistan: marks on women's faces, hands and feet, for protection, for health, and to say which tribe.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/derung-face/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Yunnan: Derung women marked on the face at twelve or thirteen, in a tradition now carried by a handful of elders.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/godna/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Northern and central India: women's marks, pricked by women, carried out of India to the Caribbean by indentured labour.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/hajichi/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Ryukyu Islands: marks on the backs of women's hands, outlawed by Japan in 1899 and now being put back on.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/hlai-marks/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Hainan: Hlai women marked on face, throat, arms and legs in patterns that told one lineage from another.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/htoe-kwin/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Every up-country Burmese man wore one: a sheet of dark-blue animals from the navel to below the knee, begun in boyhood.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/iban-borneo/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Borneo: tapped designs carved on a block and printed onto the skin, with hand marks reserved for a man who had taken a head.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/irezumi/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Japan: needles bound with silk to a wooden rod, worked by hand — *tebori*, carving by hand — over years, in a design that covers the body like a garment.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/kakiniit/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Inuit tattoos: women's work on women's skin, stitched with a sooted thread drawn under the skin, or poked.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/kalinga-cordillera/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, where Spanish rule never reached and the tattooing was never interrupted.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/kayan-borneo/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Upriver Borneo, where the tattooists were women and the work went on a woman's forearms, thighs and feet across years.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/konyak-naga/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Nagaland and across the Myanmar border: chest and face marks a man received for taking a head.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/marquesan-patutiki/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Marquesas: coverage so complete that Willowdean Handy's 1922 survey had to be drawn panel by panel to record it.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/mentawai-titi/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Mentawai islands, west of Sumatra: long lines laid along arms, chest and legs, added to at each stage of a life.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/sak-kha-lai/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The Lanna leg tattoo: waist to knee, sometimes to the ankle, dense enough that the murals paint it as a pair of black trousers.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/sak-yant/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Letters, numbers and figures arranged into a diagram — *yant* — and pricked into skin with a long needle.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/shan-tattooing/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The same leg work as the Burmese, carried further — to the ankles, up the back, and on the specialists who tattooed everybody else's charms.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/sicanje/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Bosnia: Catholic girls' forearms and hands marked with crosses, circles and fences, pricked with soot and honey.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/stick-and-poke/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The one everybody has seen: a needle, ink, no machine — punk kitchens, prisons, and now studios that do nothing else.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/ta-moko/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

New Zealand: albatross-bone chisels struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that stays visible as texture, not only as colour.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/tatau/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Samoa: a comb of bone and turtle shell, struck with a mallet, covering a man from the middle of the back to the knees.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tradition/veiqia/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Fiji: girls marked at puberty by older women called *dauveiqia*, paid in tapa cloth and whale teeth.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/method/cut/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The skin is cut or chiselled and pigment is rubbed into the cut, so the mark has a texture as well as a colour.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/method/machine/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

An electric motor drives the needle, at speeds between fifty and three thousand insertions a minute. It is here for contrast.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/method/poke/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A point held in the hand and pushed into the skin, once per mark, with the pigment carried on or into the hole.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/method/stitch/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A needle carrying a thread blackened with soot, drawn through the skin so the line of pigment stays where the thread passed.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/method/tap/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A needle or a comb of needles fixed at a right angle to a handle, and a second piece of wood striking the handle to drive it in.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/au/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A set of combs — wide ones for filling, narrow ones for line — each hafted at a right angle and struck with a light mallet.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/design-block/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

Not a needle: a carved wooden block, inked and printed onto the skin, so the tattooist follows a line instead of remembering one.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/gisi-pat-ik/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A citrus thorn — or a bundle of them — lashed at a right angle to a short stick, tapped by a second stick.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/hnitkwasok/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

A brass rod about two feet long, weighted at the top with a cast figure, with a split four-way point at the other end.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/khem-sak/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The sak yant needle: a long steel or brass shaft, pushed with one hand and steered with the other.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/lek-char/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The northern instrument: an iron stylus of the kind used to incise palm-leaf manuscripts, taken to skin.

https://nanobotco.github.io/hand-poke/tool/needle-and-sinew/2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

The same needle that sewed the clothing, threaded with sinew blackened in soot and drawn under the skin.