As the founder of Two Hands Tattoo, Stefan ‘Spider’ Sinclair has redefined New Zealanders’ relationship with tattoos.
On any given day, walking down any street in New Zealand, you’ll likely pass someone who has some part of their body decorated with ink.
It might be a 50s pin-up adorning a
For 46-year-old local tattoo hero Stefan Sinclair, it has always been a consistent love of what the tattoo world terms ‘Western Traditional’ - a tattoo style with bold black outlines and a limited colour palette, with common motifs influenced by nautical tattoos. Think a love heart dedicated to mum, an anchor, a mermaid, a swallow - just some of the motifs adopted by homesick sailors during the turn of the 20th century who felt comfort in the permanence of a tattoo while navigating life on tour.
“I’ve always been interested in tradition, heritage, lineage in tattooing,” says Stefan when we catch up mid-exhibition installation at Studio One Toi Tū on Ponsonby Rd where he’s setting up a timely retrospective exhibition to mark 20 years of his tattooing business Two Hands Tattoo.
What began as a tattoo studio in 2005 quickly grew into one of New Zealand’s premier tattoo collectives, shifting to its current 127 Ponsonby Rd location in 2009. From its new home, it has slowly expanded into a studio of seven fulltime staff and a rotating roster of international and local artists along with its complementary Flash City barber services.
Specialising in a wide range of tattoo styles including American traditional, blackwork, traditional Japanese and fine line, Two Hands has grown in parallel to the tattoo industry’s own trajectory since the mid-2000s - which is much more mainstream and widely accessible.
Having drawn his entire life, Stefan has spent the better part of the past two decades honing his craft as a leading tattooist.
“What got me interested in tattooing in the first place was early 20th-century tattooing which could be described as ‘the sailor’ era of tattooing.
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Advertise with NZME.“When I first started, all tattooers literally knew each other or knew of each other, and when we opened Two Hands, there might have only been something like six or seven tattoo shops in the whole of the city. So we all knew of each other and a lot of us were friends with each other.
“These days the community and the industry is so big, that there’s really just no way to know everybody,” he says. “There are so many practitioners now and so many shops, that I feel like I’m meeting new artists all the time.”
But tattoos are one of the oldest forms of body decoration performed all over the world, and the renaissance of getting inked is unsurprising to Stefan. He has seen his practice evolve in those pivotal years when pop culture and the digital age have accelerated our desire for uniqueness and a sense of individuality.
“When I began in 2005, it was much harder to try and find specific references for the style of tattooing I was going for. There weren’t a lot of books about it plus the internet was still relatively new. I didn’t even have a computer when I started let alone internet access,” he says, laughing.
Auckland’s history as a port city and its trade and commerce roots is also not lost on Stefan’s tattoo preferences.
“I would actually often find myself at places like Schooner Tavern, which was a wharfies’ and sailors’ pub in Downtown Auckland. They used to have gigs back in the day and I’d quite often end up down there.
“They had a Seamans hostel and there were a lot of guys down there who collected tattoos on their travels in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam. I’d always try and talk to those guys and look at their tattoos and try and memorise them because obviously it was before camera phones. So I used to try and see them and try and remember how they were and try and redraw them.”
Back home from his main base in LA for two community events - the Forever: Retrospective exhibition and an accompanying annual three-day Two Hands mini-convention called Tattoo Time - Stefan says he’s looking forward to marking 20 years with the people who have inspired him along the way.
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Advertise with NZME.From February 14-16, Tattoo Time will play host to 32 leading tattoo artists from around the world including New York, London, Melbourne, Vienna and San Francisco. The main event is expected to draw in people from all walks of life engaging with some of the world’s best who Stefan handpicked by invitation.
“Tattoo Time originally started around 12 years ago, and it really started from needing more space. I was making so many connections over the world, and so many of these artists would come over to New Zealand during summer and we’d run out of space in our Ponsonby Rd studio, so we thought, ‘you know what, maybe we just find another space and we can just all tattoo in there for a weekend.’ So we just kept doing it, and then it grew from there.”
It’s also an exercise in reflection as Stefan explains how the process of going through his work has allowed him to think about his own personal evolution. Like many urban Māori, that includes reconnecting with their whakapapa. The recent passing of his grandmother was also an instigator for inspiring him to incorporate more Toi Māori into his practice.
“I’ve always been proud to be Māori, but I grew up very separated from my whakapapa at first,” recalls Stefan. “It wasn’t something that really appealed to me deep down, and I really worshipped British and American culture.
“My very second job was in a tattoo shop in Ngāruawāhia and all of our tattoo flash on the walls was only Tā moko, so I definitely cut my teeth with the culture from an early stage, but it definitely wasn’t what I was passionate about at all. I was very passionate about Western-style tattooing. That’s what spoke to me,” he says, admitting that his strength lies in pictures rather than patterns. “It’s what I’m naturally better at.”
Which leads us to the question of why exactly are we a nation obsessed with getting tattoos?
“It’s because of our whakapapa,” says Stefan matter-of-factly.
“And it’s because of our ancient history of tattooing. Some people probably wouldn’t see the connection between that and modern tattooing, but there’s a very direct link between our lineage of tattooing and the Western lineage of tattooing. Aotearoa has had both since the very beginning.
“The very first sailors that were coming down on Captain Cook’s ship were the first Europeans to rediscover tattooing in the 1700s. Those sailors were actually getting tattooed here, and on other motu as well - Tahiti, Tonga, Hawaii - they were getting tattooed in all these spots and learning to tattoo. They were taking our tipuna’s knowledge and applying it in ways that made sense for them.”
Two Hands has also played a pivotal role in shaping Auckland’s creative identity, with a client roster that includes everyone from Viva cover stars Lorde and Benee to Greens MP Chloë Swarbrick and chef Kia Kanuta.
He is currently working on hand designs for Denise L’Estrange-Corbet - co-founder of fashion label World - on her first tattoos at the age of 65.
“When I first started, I was always tattooing people in the creative industries, especially musicians and people in fashion. I think that led to us becoming well-known in that sphere,” says Stefan, who laughs about always appearing in the social pages of the era. In hindsight, perhaps it was an effective form of marketing and PR?
Stefan smiles at this memory. “I always used to be at all those parties, and I think that’s an important part of the success of Two Hands. We’ve always felt incredibly supported by the media, and the design, arts, and music communities. Being out and about in those early years was a form of connecting with people who later became clients.”
As we take a closer look at the studio space housing his exhibition, which features a dentist chair he used in his very first tattoo parlour all those years ago, the walls are covered with some of Stefan’s extensive archive of designs along with a wall dedicated to the memorable campaigns featuring some of his friends, muses and people from the creative industries.
These days he’s a tattooist on tour. Four months in New Zealand, three to four months in LA, and the rest travelling parts of the US and around the world, with dates in the diary already for time in Berlin to Portland.
Did he ever foresee himself operating on such a global scale all those years ago tattooing on an old dentist chair on Symonds St?
He has come full circle.
“I knew this was what I wanted to do forever,” he says looking up at the ceiling, “but I didn’t really see it happening the way it panned out or how the industry has changed significantly in that time. I really just imagined myself being a little owner-operator with a small tattoo studio that I would just sit in for the rest of my life doing walk-in tattoos.
“When I started it was very much still for outsiders – and I felt like an outsider. My friends were too. I thought it would stay that way. Even like walking around the streets back in those days, if you saw someone with a lot of tattoos, you’d acknowledge each other like some silent code of acknowledgement.
“I catch myself trying to do that now and the person probably doesn’t feel the same way. So many people have tattoos now.”
FOREVER: A Retrospective Exhibition, is on display now at Studio One Toi Tū. Tattoo Time 2025, runs from February 14-16 at Studio One Toi Tū.
Dan Ahwa is Viva’s creative director and a senior premium lifestyle journalist for the New Zealand Herald.
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