Glimpsing Rolf Buchholz from afar, you’d be forgiven for thinking the dark mass under his nose and around his mouth is an impressive beard in the making. Take a closer look, and you catch your breath. Rolf’s ‘face fuzz’ is actually made from over 94 closely placed piercings, including rings neatly arranged along the corners of his lower lip, 25 bars threaded across his eyebrows and eight pieces of jewellery perforating his nose.

In fact, the 52-year-old computer expert from Germany has accumulated 453 studs and rings in total over the last 12 years, of which 278 are located around his genital area.

Rolf is coy about what drove him to go under the needle for the first time, but he admits that when he was younger, tattoos and piercings never really appealed to him. “Of course, I saw people with tattoos and piercings, but that lifestyle was never available to me so I didn’t really think about it or consider it for myself,” says Rolf. “Then, when I was 40 years old, I just went to get my first tattoo and piercing on the same day. The piercing was in my nipple and I had a tribal design inked on my leg.”

Rolf lost his piercing virginity at Deep Metal piercing studio in his hometown of Dortmund and, ever since, he’s been able to pop in and top up whenever the mood takes him. Deep Metal piercer Andrea Venhaus has been instrumental in helping Rolf to push the limits of his flesh. The rings on Rolf’s mouth are so weighty they cause his bottom lip to gape open, but he says the metal doesn’t affect his day-to-day life.

“I started with smaller rings pierced through my lower lip, and they were gradually stretched over time by replacing them with larger ones,” explains Rolf. “Because it’s been a slow process, I’ve become used to them, so I can’t really tell if it has affected the way I speak, but I’ve learned to live with them just fine. When I shave my face, I run the blade around the piercings and then cut the hairs in between with scissors.”