Peter Judson decided at the grand age of 92 to get a tattoo - or two. Photos / Te Awamutu Tattoo
A Te Awamutu great-grandfather has become the talk of the town after deciding at the age of 92 it was time for his first tattoo.
Peter Judson marked his birthday in October and said getting a tattoo was something of an unplanned bucket list item.
“I thought, I wanna do something different for my birthday this year,” Judson told the Waikato Herald.
“I knew I didn’t want to jump out of an aeroplane or do a bungee jump ... My kids all have [tattoos], so I thought, why not get one?”
Judson said when he was young, tattoos weren’t that common, so getting one had not been on his mind – until now.
“It’s something I haven’t done before.
“I never even thought about it when I was a kid.”
Judson is originally from Manawatū and moved to South Waikato in 1967, working at the Kinleith Mill.
After a stint as a school bus driver and mowing lawns, he gave up work at the age of 70 and moved to Te Awamutu 10 years ago.
For his first tattoo, he chose a tiger head – to go on his forearm.
It doesn’t have a special meaning, Judson said – he just liked the way it looked.
“I didn’t know what I was gonna get, so I just went online. I found the tiger head and quite liked it.”
Judson booked his appointment with Callum Burns at Tattoo Te Awamutu and was all ready to go.
Then his son sent him a different tattoo idea: a kiwi with ferns, which Judson liked a lot as well.
So Judson booked a second appointment for the kiwi.
Both tattoos are not quite finished yet and still need some touch-ups, but he said he was “quite chuffed with them”.
And he is already considering getting a third tattoo.
“I have been a Waikato [Draught] man all my life, so I thought of Willie the Waiter. That might still be in line.
“I got the bug now.”
The tattoo with the kiwi might even become a partner tattoo with his son, who is living in Australia and coming to visit at Christmas, Judson said.
When he showed him the kiwi, ”he quite liked it and said he was going to get a kiwi too”.
In general, Judson’s family – his wife, two children, two stepchildren, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren – had been supportive of him getting a tattoo.
“They were all fine with it,” he said.
More than fine with it was Tattoo Te Awamutu’s social media community, who quickly spread the word of the “bloody cool” client.
The post showing Judson with his kiwi tattoo has attracted 1377 likes, 84 comments and 15 shares.
Tattooist Callum Burns said Judson had been the oldest person he had ever tattooed.
“He is just such a good dude ... a legend of a guy,” Burns said.
“If I even get to that age, I can only hope to be half as cool as he is,” he said.
While Burns said more and more “older” people would come in for tattoos as they became less and less stigmatised, a client as old as Judson was a “novelty”.
“It’s been awesome to work with him.
“This happens once in a blue moon.”
Tattooing on older skin is a bit of a challenge, Burns said, even though he knew what he was in for.
“With old skin, there is no bounce. You try to trap the ink between the top layer of the skin and the [skin’s] fat, but old skin is very thin and it’s very easy to go too deep.
“It’s a balancing act.”
Burns said “low and slow” had been the key to Judson’s tattoos. It took between an hour and an hour-and-a-half for each tattoo.
“I designed [them] to be kind of simple and with the least amount of trauma to the skin.
“I was a bit worried for the old boy ... and had all these horror stories going through my head.
“But a while later, Pete came back in – happy as – and his tattoo was healing well.”
Tattoo Te Awamutu owner Dyl Eyeington said he didn’t quite expect Judson’s post to become so popular, but it had been “pretty cool”.
While he didn’t have clients above the age of 90 coming in every day, he did notice that the older generation was showing more of an interest in tattoos “in recent days”.
“I just tattooed my Nana the other day, which was pretty special.”
Eyeington also had a few clients in their 70s and 80s.
“It’s a lot more common than you think.
“We would never say you are too old for a tattoo or turn anyone away because of their age.
“We just have to take a hell of a lot of extra care.”
Eyeington said tattooing older clients just took a bit longer and the artist has to watch how the skin reacted as they were tattooing.
“[Having older skin] also limits the designs, they need to be more simplistic.
“We wouldn’t be doing any heavy shading and layering and overlaps.”
He said the reason for getting tattoos at an older age was mixed.
“It’s often something they didn’t think about when they were young, because it wasn’t as common.
“It’s a lot more accepted these days.
“For the older ladies, it’s sometimes also that their husbands were against it, but they have now passed away and they are like ‘now I can do what I want’.”
Danielle Zollickhofer is the Waikato news director and a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. She joined NZME in 2021 and is based in Hamilton.