A tattoo shop owner in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has set up a business that would preserve tattoos of dead people as a work of art, according to MSN News.
Peter van der Helm, a Dutch entrepreneur who owens Walls and Skin tattoo parlor, and the man behind the concept, wants to remove and freeze dead people's tattoos and plans to preserve them as artwork, the report said.
"Everyone spends their lives in search of immortality and this is a simple way to get a piece of it," van der Helm said in an interview. "Everybody with tattoos has that idea. It's not a new idea, we just found a way to actually do it."
One client, Floris Hirschfeld had a portrait of her mother who died two years ago tattooed on his back. He hopes to honor her more by having the image of his tattoo - skin and all - to adorn the wall of an art collector's home, the report said.
Together with 30 other clients, Hirschfeld have donated their tattooed skin to Walls and Skin in a will in case they die and each of them will be paid a few hundred euros.
"People have stuffed animals in their house, so why not skin?" Hirschfeld told MSN News. "If you look in certain old tattoo shops, there is always a jar with special water and a piece of skin in it and it does look terrible. This way it looks much better, so if I can be preserved like this, yes please!"
According to Walls and Skin, when the donors die, a Dutch pathologist will remove the tattoo and freeze or package it in formaldehyde, ideally within 48 hours. The tattoo parlor will then send the frozen skin to a laboratory outside the Netherlands, where a 12-week procedure will be conducted to extract water from the tattooed skin and replace it with silicone that would leave a rubbery substance.
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