In an age in which it appears impossible to walk down the high street every summer without being confronted by countless examples of inked flesh, you may be inclined to think that tattoos are no longer associated with the underground, or indeed the underclass. But the history of the practice is long and winding. A Vanity Fair account from 1926 is typical of many similar interventions both before and after: “Tattooing has passed from the savage to the sailor, from the sailor to the landsman. It has since percolated through the entire social stratum; tattooing has received its credentials, and may now be found beneath many a tailored shirt.”

“There’s obviously a long, complicated and important history relating tattoos to sailors, and also to criminals and assorted ne’er do wells”, explains Matt Lodder, author of Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art), a handsomely illustrated new book on the subject. “But the main reason, certainly in Britain, we have a tattooing industry is because rich people wanted to get tattooed. I wanted to explore that industry and how it developed, and especially look at the people involved in it who have, with varying degrees of success, made tattooing a serious and standardised professional practice.”

Debunking the commonly held notion of tattooing arriving in the UK after Captain Cook’s Pacific voyages of the mid-18th century – “There was tattooing in Britain before and after and the styles didn’t change” – Lodder instead identifies the key event as the opening up of Japan in 1858 to foreign visitors and trade. “Just as Japanese prints, clothing, furniture and so on became exciting and exotic to aristocratic tastes, so did the Japanese tradition of tattooing.” A succession of British royal visitors and future monarchs were tattooed while there along with various other crowned heads of Europe.

Inevitably the trend cascaded down the social hierarchy, and what was an expensive upper-class pursuit, with gentlemen maybe privately sharing their tattoos over dinner, eventually became a more public spectacle among a wider demographic. “If your king, or your bank manager, has a tattoo it’s unlikely to be visible,” explains Lodder. “But if you are a manual labourer rolling up your sleeves it’s a different story.”

Over the years the popularity of tattoos has waxed and waned, with a particular low point coming in the decades after the second world war. However, emerging vibrant subcultures from the gay scene to punk began to readopt the practice, supported by innovative and energetic practitioners.

Lodder identifies a remarkable lineage of tattooists who established the craft, kept the flame alive and broke new ground: Sutherland Macdonald, who adopted a hi-tech electric machine as early as 1891, and was a society tattooist who advertised in the likes of Country Life and the Sporting Times; Les Skuse, a key British figure during the post-second world war slump, when he estimated there were as few as eight full-time tattooists working in the UK; Phil Sparrow, an American novelist and college professor, who went from corresponding with Gertrude Stein to becoming the Hells Angels’ official tattooist in Oakland; and Jessie Knight, one of the few women in the tattooing world and who would advertise her work in blank verse.

“The question as to why people go into a shop and pay someone they don’t know to get tattooed is a fascinating one,” says Lodder. “In part it’s as simple as people wanting images that they like, but there is so much more going on and the stories of the people who made those images cast a remarkable light on something that is still often regarded as a deviant social practice and yet is simultaneously a thriving global industry.”

• Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art by Matt Lodder is published by Yale.

Feel good ink: five highlights from the book

Girls all go for the man Phil Sparrow
There is some irony in this image advertising Sparrow – real name Samuel Steward – who was openly gay at a time when it was illegal. He said he finally left academia when he realised he could make more money in a week tattooing than he could in a month as a professor of literature.

Hand-painted flash on cardboard c.1914-18 – Alexander Colville Gordon
An American who came to London in 1907, Gordon’s use of standardised design sheets was aimed at a new demographic of working-class customers. Long overlooked, his work is now held in the National Museum of Wales collection.

Bristol Tattoo Club members playing cards at the White Swan pub, 1954 – Designs by Les Skuse
The club, still in existence today, was set up by Les Skuse to showcase his work and was modelled on Japanese tattoo clubs. It attracted widespread media attention at a time when tattooing was deeply unfashionable.

Jessie Knight (right) with friend, 1950s – Paul King
Knight, by far the most prominent women in the industry, had mixed feelings about tattooing other women. Her salon was filled with verse signs including one that read: “When tattoos are on a lady, folks are apt to think she’s shady. But as this is not always true, tattoos for ladies is taboo.”

Reginald A Loyd, 1905 – Design by Sutherland Macdonald
Loyd was typical of Macdonald’s wealthy upper-class clients as the son of an MP who later became a barrister and land tax commissioner for Berkshire. The design includes catfish taken from Hokusai.