Dean Dennis learned to tattoo from Lyle Tuttle in the 1970s. Not wanting to step on Lyle’s toes, Dean crossed the San Francisco Bay and opened a shop in Alameda, California, where the large Naval Air Station provided a steady stream of tattoo customers. A few years later, with Lyle’s blessing, Dean secured a space at 394 Broadway in San Francisco. It was there, in 1980, that Dean Dennis hired Greg Irons and gave him his first professional tattoo job. Greg was a talented artist with little tattooing experience. He had only done a few tattoos on friends but he was up to the task. Before long, he was making tattoo history of his own. This stencil was cut by Dean Dennis for a customer in the 1980s and still contains charcoal in the grooves, a wonderful bit of evidence from the tattooing process of the time.
15 x 12 inches
