One in five Canadians has at least one tattoo, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who sports a Haida symbol on his left shoulder. Tattoos have moved into the mainstream, companies have begun to relax rules on visible tattos in the workplace. The new exhibition charts the journey of tattooing from its deep historical and global roots, via its marginalizaiton, to its current revival in many cultures around the world. Here are six essential tattoo terms to know while walking through the Tattoos exhibition:

Glass is probably the most fluid of solids. Looking at blown glass, such as that in the ROM's Chihuly exhibition, is like watching movement made still. If you look carefully at the handles of the perfectly preserved handles of this Roman glass vase from Syria (above), it looks as though it is still a fluid, still dynamically moving along its flow. In a way, that is because it is. Glass essentially has the atomic structure of a fluid, but it has been so rapidly cooled that it is essentially stuck in that condition. 
 

Guest blog by Doug Wallace

Anthropologist Lars Krutak has documented the tattoo traditions of Indigenous people all over the world, from the Amazon to the high Arctic.

Eleanor Wachtel is a Canadian writer and broadcaster, and host of the CBC Radio’s popular literary show Writers & Company. Over the 26 years Wachtel has been hosting her show, she has interviewed some of the most compelling figures in Canadian literature, including Saul Bellow, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, and Mordecai Richler. Wachtel is renowned for turning the traditional interview into an in-depth portrait of her subject.