There will be some still, for whom the thought of combining the rarefied world of fine watchmaking with the rebellious underworld of tattooing will feel like accompanying a roadside café burger with Château Pétrus (bet it’s been done). But watchland is home to a colourful circle of non-conformists, who think nothing of overstepping such old-fashioned boundaries. Much the richer it is for it, too.
Earlier in 2013 tattoo artist Mo Coppoletta and RJ Romain Jerome came together to produce the Tattoo-DNA, a watch with a dial design penned by Coppoletta that looked like it had been lifted from a salty seadog’s heavily inked forearm. Not to everyone’s taste, naturally, but a collaboration to awaken those anaesthetized by the industry’s unwaveringly predictable normal news slew.
Coppoletta, it turns out, is something of a watch nut. Italian by birth, he has lived and worked in London since 1996. He set up his own tattoo parlour ‘The Family Business’ in 2003 on Exmouth Market in an area of central London called Clerkenwell that was once known as Little Italy, which is just round the corner from where I work.
When I arrive at The Family Business Mo greets me with a firm handshake. He is stylishly dressed, although having Googled him before I left the office, I suspect somewhat casually by his standards. His wool necktie is Brunello Cucinelli, mind, and his heavy brown overcoat is from Italian outfitter Stone Island. Not too shabby. He’s dressed for winter, meaning there’s almost no sign of his own tattoos, which he says cover around 30 per cent of his body. Just a flicker of ink peaks out from under his cuff, hinting at what lies beneath.
He takes me past reception and a gentleman with tattoos running up his neck, and into the parlour itself. It’s busy. The sound of needles reverberates like a chorus of electric shavers and there’s a smell in the air I don’t recognise. This, I will freely admit, is my first venture through the doors of a tattoo parlour, and I assume the odour to be a mixture of ink, gently sizzling skin and fear. There are chairs and benches in every corner, each occupied by a black-clothed canvas that looks like it hasn’t seen the sun in a while.
We settle in a claustrophobic underground room that feels like a cross between a doctor’s surgery and an S&M dungeon. My first couple of questions provoke a shrug and a look of slight bemusement. I ask about his background and he asks me how far back I want to go. He’s 42, Italian, grew up in a small town, studied law and is now a successful, internationally renowned tattoo artist.
And how does one become a tattoo artist? Again, a shrug. ‘Like you become anything,’ he says. Did you train? ‘There’s nothing, it does not exist. You start with passion, and then you try and turn it into a profession, and then one thing leads to another. It doesn’t happen overnight. Unless you win X Factor.’ He chuckles. I think he’s trying to be helpful. How would you describe yourself? ‘I don’t know what I am, really,’ he says, his voice imbued with honesty rather than false modesty. ‘A hybrid, I suppose. I try to do the best job, whatever it is.’
He moved to London because, in his words, ‘Italy wasn’t ready.’ He started as a tattoo artist, developed a reputation and found himself in demand. Clients flock from all round the world for what he calls his ‘dark but sugar-coated’ work, and can expect to join a waiting list of three to four months for his services.
It’s also brought him to the attention of a number of progressive artists, most of them British. ‘I was lucky enough to have a few collaborations with good brands in the last couple of years where I’ve applied my aesthetic and my skills to other platforms,’ he says.
He worked on a fabric design for Liberty of London, a drinks label for Ralph Lauren, screen-printing for The Prodigy, hand-held fans for the Parisian company Duvelleroy and most recently on the watch for RJ Romain Jerome. He’s even tried his hand at animation, doing the drawings for the haunting but witty three-minute short that accompanied the DNA-Tattoo’s launch.
The RJ Romain Jerome project may have introduced Coppoletta to the watch industry, but by contrast he was already very familiar with his subject – he knows his watches. On his wrist as we talk is a Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre à Chronographe. ‘It’s the best chronograph there is,’ he says, this time with the sort of shrug that suggests any doubt about that statement would be daft.
He numbers his collection of mechanicals at around 10, but there’s one brand he reserves special praise for. ‘I fell in love with De Bethune in 2008 when the first DB25s came out. I got the DB25 with starry sky – as soon as it came out, I knew it had to be my watch.’
He’s not an official De Bethune ambassador and he has yet to collaborate with them, describing himself as a friend of the brand. ‘I’m an evangelist for the brand,’ he says, expanding on his theme. ‘It deserves it because of the amount of technical effort and the aesthetic involved. But it’s not just me saying this.’
He’s right. De Bethune’s star has risen steadily since the company was founded in 2002, reaching a zenith with the DB28, which scooped the Aiguille d’Or at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in 2011.
Will he work with them one day? Another shrug. ‘Hopefully, hopefully,’ he says. ‘You never know. We get along, so why not? There is more than one way of working with a watch brand, not just on a watch – graphics, for example. So I’m sure that if there is a way, yes.’
Before I leave, I return to the subject of tattooing. Would he have any more? ‘No, not now,’ he says, blowing stiffly as if trying to keep himself warm. ‘I am not in the right mind for it – I would scream!’ Perhaps he’s given up collecting tattoos for watches, I suggest. ‘Yes!’ he laughs. ‘Yes, I think that might be it…’
