How Body Piercing Became an Industry: 1975 to Today
Ask most people when the body piercing industry started and they'll say 1975 — the year Jim Ward began piercing out of his house in West Hollywood. That's when the practice got going in the West. It isn't when the industry did.
An industry needs more than people doing the work. It needs manufacturers, clear material specs, shared standards, and some agreement on what "good" actually means. Piercing got all of that in a short, intense stretch between 1991 and 1994 — and the real story is less about the studios and more about the machine shops.
Before the Industry: One Company, Everything
For about fifteen years, modern Western piercing basically ran through Gauntlet.
Ward opened the studio as a proper commercial storefront on November 17, 1978. But Gauntlet wasn't just a place to get pierced. It made its own jewelry, ran a mail-order catalog, and from 1977 published PFIQ — Piercing Fans International Quarterly — which for years was the only real source of information on the subject anywhere. Studio, factory, and trade press, all under one roof. We dig into that era in piercings in the 1970s.
That kind of concentration explains a lot. It's why so much of the everyday vocabulary — "barbell," "circular barbell," "captive bead ring" — came from one address, as we cover in the history of the captive bead ring. It also explains why a fair amount of early "history" turned out to be made up: one pamphlet from one company became the field's founding text. That whole story is in piercing superstitions and folklore.
Jewelry back then was mostly gold, then stainless steel once Gauntlet started making it in the early 1980s. A few smaller makers showed up — Spain's Custom produced externally threaded barbells and sold them through PFIQ until Gauntlet's own steel line arrived. When Ray Spain's health forced him to shut down, Sailor Sid Diller bought the equipment and kept going as Silver Anchor.
What none of it had was a real specification. "Steel" meant whatever the person making it happened to use.
The European Half: Mr Sebastian
The American story is only half of it. The other half ran through London.
Alan Oversby (1933–1996), better known as Mr Sebastian, was the central figure in how contemporary piercing developed in Europe. He started out as an art teacher, left teaching for tattooing and piercing, and built his practice from a London studio largely within the gay leather community.
What makes him matter to the wider industry (not just Britain) is that he was in regular contact with both Doug Malloy and Jim Ward. Malloy sponsored Oversby's trip to Los Angeles and trips the other way — bringing Ward and Sailor Sid Diller to London. Those exchanges are how techniques and equipment crossed the Atlantic. Ward interviewed him for PFIQ issue 4 in Summer 1978.
He also left a lasting technical mark: Oversby was largely responsible for the adoption of topical and local anesthetics in European piercing. That's why anesthetic use became standard in Britain and stayed almost unknown in North America. Two regional traditions that split from one person's practice.
In 1987 he was charged as part of Operation Spanner, a police investigation into consensual activity among a group of men. He pleaded guilty in 1990 to assault for performing piercings on clients. The case is a significant piece of UK legal history and it shaped how the trade developed in Britain. The Association of Professional Piercers' Body Piercing Archive documented his career in a 2022 exhibition and book, Mr. Sebastian and the Rise of the UK Body Piercing Industry, edited by Paul King.
1991: The Year It Became an Industry
If there's a single hinge point, this is it. In 1991, three American manufacturers were founded: Anatometal, Body Circle, and Industrial Strength.
More important than the companies themselves is what they brought with them. 1991 is when "implant grade" entered body jewelry — Anatometal and Industrial Strength both introduced implant-grade materials that year, along with countersunk ends on barbells.
That's the real shift. Before 1991, jewelry was made from whatever a given shop worked with and described however they felt like describing it. After 1991, there was a named external specification — the same ASTM standards used for surgical implants — that anyone could check a supplier against.
Anatometal, based in Santa Cruz, California, became the first corporate member of the Association of Professional Piercers and played a big role in drafting the minimum jewelry standards the APP formally adopted in 2009.
The longer materials story that made this possible — steel's nickel problem, titanium's arrival from dentistry, the standards themselves — is in our history of body jewelry materials.
1994: The Rules
Three years later, two things happened on different continents that turned those specifications into expectations.
In California, the Association of Professional Piercers was founded by Michaela Grey and colleagues, with early members from studios including Nomad and Gauntlet. The APP started publishing material standards that referenced the same ASTM and ISO implant specifications, and running conferences where piercers trained.
In Europe, the EU adopted the Nickel Directive (94/27/EC) — the first regulation that limited not how much nickel a product contained, but how much it released into skin. Those limits still govern jewelry sold in Europe today.
Between a trade body setting standards and a regulator enforcing a measurable limit, "what is this made of" stopped being a matter of trust and became a matter of paperwork.
1997 Onward: Refinement
Once the materials question was mostly settled, the next wave of innovation went into how jewelry attached and how it actually fitted.
1997 brought the threadless system, patented by NeoMetal and introduced to the US market in 1998 — a fix for a machining problem that ended up becoming the industry default for small-gauge jewelry. That story is in who invented threadless jewelry.
The internally threaded barbell, for what it's worth, is generally credited not to any American maker but to a piercer known as Tattoo Samy in Frankfurt, Germany.
1998 marked the end of the beginning: Gauntlet closed. The company that had been studio, factory, and publisher for two decades was gone — and by then it didn't need to be any of those things. There were manufacturers, a trade association, and standards that outlived it.
The Timeline
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1975 | Jim Ward begins piercing at home in West Hollywood |
| 1977 | PFIQ launches — the field's first trade publication |
| 1978 | Gauntlet opens as a storefront (Nov 17); Ward interviews Mr Sebastian in PFIQ 4 |
| Early 1980s | Gauntlet begins manufacturing stainless steel jewelry |
| 1991 | Anatometal, Body Circle and Industrial Strength founded; "implant grade" arrives |
| 1994 | APP founded; EU adopts the Nickel Directive |
| 1997 | NeoMetal patents the threadless system |
| 1998 | Gauntlet closes |
| 2009 | APP formally adopts minimum jewelry standards |
What Still Isn't Settled
Two things are worth being honest about.
There's no universal regulator. The APP is a voluntary trade association, not a licensing body. Piercing regulation in the United States is handled state by state, and the requirements vary a great deal — some states license piercers and inspect studios, others barely touch it. "APP member" means a studio chose to meet a standard, not that anyone forced them to.
"Surgical steel" is still an unregulated phrase. Thirty years after implant-grade materials showed up, jewelry can still be sold as surgical steel with no specification behind it. The standards exist; using them is optional. That's exactly why a named ASTM designation matters more than a marketing term — see titanium vs surgical steel.
The sterilization side of professionalization — autoclaves, single-use needles, the shift away from piercing guns — is its own story. We cover the gun part in the history of the piercing gun.
What It Means for What You Buy
The practical takeaway from all of this is short and useful. For a healing piercing: implant-grade titanium, solid 14K or 18K gold, or niobium — and a named standard rather than a marketing word.
Browse our implant-grade titanium range or our threadless jewelry.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did body piercing become an industry?
The practice started commercially in the West in the mid-1970s with Gauntlet, but the industry proper dates to 1991, when Anatometal, Body Circle and Industrial Strength were founded and implant-grade materials entered body jewelry. Standards and a trade association followed in 1994.
Who was Mr Sebastian?
Alan Oversby (1933–1996), a London piercer and tattooist who was the central figure in the development of contemporary body piercing in Europe. He corresponded with Doug Malloy and Jim Ward, and the mutual visits between London and Los Angeles are how techniques crossed the Atlantic. He's also the reason anesthetic use became standard practice in British piercing and not in North America.
What does "implant grade" mean and when did it start?
It means the material is certified to a specific standard for surgical implant use — for titanium usually ASTM F136, for steel ASTM F138. It entered body jewelry in 1991 via Anatometal and Industrial Strength. Before that, no external specification was in general use.
Is the piercing industry regulated?
Not uniformly. In the United States it's handled state by state and requirements vary widely. The Association of Professional Piercers, founded in 1994, sets standards but membership is voluntary — it's a trade association, not a licensing authority.
What is the APP?
The Association of Professional Piercers, founded in California in 1994. It publishes jewelry and practice standards that reference ASTM and ISO implant specifications, runs training conferences, and maintains the Body Piercing Archive, which documents the field's history. It formally adopted minimum jewelry standards in 2009.
Why does so much piercing history seem unreliable?
Because a good deal of it was invented. The field's early founding document was a 1970s pamphlet whose author fabricated historical origins as a marketing strategy, and those stories stuck around for decades. We cover it in piercing superstitions and folklore.
Who made body jewelry before Anatometal?
Mainly Gauntlet, which manufactured its own and sold by mail order. Smaller makers included Spain's Custom, whose equipment was later bought by Sailor Sid Diller and run as Silver Anchor. None of them worked to a published external specification.
This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. Standards, regulations and licensing requirements vary by country and by state. If you are choosing a studio or jewelry for a healing piercing, ask your piercer what material standard their jewelry is certified to.