Archive Note
Hendrikus Johannes Everhardus Schiffmacher was born 22 March 1952 in Harderwijk, Gelderland. He entered Amsterdam tattooing in the early 1970s through the basement of Tattoo Peter (Peter de Haan) at Sint Olofssteeg, where as an art student and photographer he documented Peter and his clients before taking up the machine himself. He opened Hanky Panky Tattooing at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 141 in the Amsterdam red light district around 1979, though one trade source dates the opening to 1982. The shop became one of continental Europe's principal hubs for visiting American practitioners including Don Ed Hardy and Mark Mahoney, and for Swiss peer Filip Leu. In March 1984 the Nederlandse Stichting Tattoo, founded by Schiffmacher, organized the first international tattoo conference in the Netherlands at Paradiso, Amsterdam, with around 600 tattoos given on premises. With Burkhard Riemschneider he produced 1000 Tattoos (Taschen, 1996), a foundational European Tattoo Renaissance reference. He founded Amsterdam Tattoo Museum iterations in 1988 (in shop), 1996 (standalone, Director Annemarie Beers, closed and reprieved 1999), 2011 to 2013 (Plantage Middenlaan 62, the largest dedicated tattoo museum in the world during its open period), and Van Woustraat 78 from February 2013 onward. He was decorated Officier in the Orde van Oranje-Nassau on 26 April 2017.