Lotteva Wagner Davis

The true story of a strong, successful, and independent woman tattooist and artist through her own words and art; the third book in a series about the Wagner tattooist family.​

Lotteva Wagner Davis was an American original—a tattooist and western artist in the early to mid-20th century. Following in the footsteps of her parents, Gus and Maud Wagner—famous tattoo artists and carnival performers—Lotteva was raised in the carnival and started tattooing in 1919, when she was just nine years old. Like her father, she used only hand tools, eschewing electric tattoo machines. She was one of few tattooists to have completely bare skin; her mother forbade her father to tattoo her, relenting only after his death, but Lotteva didn’t want to be tattooed by anyone but her father.

This is the third book in the series on the Wagner family, Last of the Hand Tattoo Artists, and is based on interviews with Lotteva and her cousin, Patricia Hook. It includes tattoo flash by Lotteva and her father, Gus, comparing their artistic styles and showing the evolution of hand tattoos from one generation to the next.

Lotteva was also a prolific artist, focusing on western US and carnival themes. She also restored carousel horses and painted signs for carousels, carnivals, and other businesses.

According to her cousin, Lotteva was “a person with one foot grounded in the ordinary world and the other in this crazy carnival world. Most people would never dare to do the stuff she did.”