White ink..

Lately I've been delving into a lot of past tattoo history and reading up on the old masters and pioneers of modern day tattooing..ie, Sailor Jerry, Bert Grimm ect. I noticed in a lot of their work as well as the flash itself there is no white ink or places for white ink. It looks as though back in those days that a lot of highlights or bright spots were done by the absence of color rather than adding white ink and the natural skin of the tattoo wearer is the actual highlight. I remember reading somewhere that white ink was not widely used if at all.

the amount of colors modern tattoo artists have available is one massive technical advancement from the days of old. You can read about stories of the old schoolers swapping ideas and colors with Japan for the first time. Pretty amazing history. Im very glad we have white, and many other colors in the spectrum, in the modern tattoo palette. I love history, but I love color blending even more! :-)

So when was the advent of white ink? When did it beging to be widely used? Does anyone know?

According to Mr. Gutowski, white ink was introduced in the late 50s early 60s. Not sure when it "gained popularity".