About
Salon Serpent Tattoo and it’s owner and founder Angelique Houtkamp
We have 7 resident artists and host international prolific guestartists on a weekly basis. We do fine line tattoos, minimal, ornamental, heavy blackwork, botanical and traditional old school tattooing.
It is important for us that everyone who comes through our door feels welcome, appreciated and comfortable.
How it started
One of the Netherlands most prominent tattoo artists, Angelique Houtkamp, decided that after over a decade of tattooing and painting, it was time to set up her own studio. She was craving a space where she could work with like minded tattooers and have more space to work on other projects.
She started her tattoo journey in one of Europe’s oldest tattoo shops, Tattoo Peter, the one legged tattoo pioneer that was selling postcards in bars around the red light district and who soon moved on to tattooing in the back of those bars. Most likely inspired by the sailors that came back from the orient sporting fancy tattoos. Before long he founded his tattoo shop in that same red light district in 1955.
photo courtesy of tattoopeter.nl
After working there for a good number of years Angelique moved to a more private shop that was very suitable for the style she was developing then. Beside this she shared a painting studio elsewhere in the city where she developed her signature watercolour painting style. In time it became clear that it was to her benefit to find a space where she could combine these two mediums and be able to showcase her art, sell and ship out multiples, have other residents to collaborate with and invite interesting international tattooers.
Thus Salon Serpent Tattoo was opened in the spring of 2011. The name and fame that Houtkamp had acquired in the tattoo and fine art field over the previous years made Salon Serpent an instant fixture on the, then modest, tattoo scene.
In the years to come the shop filled with a mix of international resident artists. All tattooers were very busy with amazing custom pieces, so much so that spontaneity was sometimes missed. Because of that, ‘Walk-in Saturday’ was brought into existence. Customers could only pick from flash created by the residents. For travelers and spur-of-the moment customers this was great. For the tattooers as well, because this meant one less night of homework making custom designs and they could design flash that they were really excited about making. The walk-in Saturday was wildly popular, with lines to the end of the block on some days. Walk in days became the thing around the world in no time. For a good reason.
Over the years, tattoo styles changed, and will most likely forever, residents changed, but some have found their home with us. Salon Serpent Tattoo still has as strong a presence as ever among the ever growing number of tattoo shops in Amsterdam and globally.
* The original term ‘flash’ meant sheets of paper with ready made, repeatable tattoo designs, placed on walls or in big folders. In some places, for instance New York, tattooing was outlawed for many decades, making it a clandestine business. Flash designs were painted on roller blind shades and hung on the walls. If police arrived to check for illegal activity the tattooers could pull the tab so the blinds rolled up quickly to make the designs disappear in a “flash”.