Eddie Poferl Tattoo Collection

Edward “Eddie” Poferl (1879-1943) was born in Austria-Hungary on 25 April 1879 and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1887 where they settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. He held a number of jobs including prizefighter, printer, police detective and tattooer. He worked sporadically as a printer from the late 1890s until his death, at one point running a print shop behind his residence. He worked as a plainclothes detective for the police department from 1912 through the early years of Prohibition. His print shop was raided for conducting an illegal brewing operation in 1925.

His greatest success came from tattooing. He started tattooing as “Professor Eddie Poferl” in the late 1890s and tattooed at least through the 1920s. The earliest photograph of him as a tattooer was taken at an arcade in Seattle, circa 1898. In 1903 Poferl advertised himself in the Minneapolis Star Tribune as the “Best tattooer in the west” before moving back and working most of his career in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was noted in Albert Parry’s “Tattoo: Secrets of a Strange Art” (1933), the seminal history of American tattooing, listed among tattooers including Charlie Wagner, Harry Lawson and Red Gibbons.

Poferl was married twice. First, to Augusta Schneider with whom he had four children. Upon her death, he married Minnie Schneider Sommer with whom he had one child. He died on 4 June 1943.