Slated by The Guardian as 'the next phase of expressive self-harm', the tooth tattoos created by the Heward Dental Lab have attracted global interest since their website, www.toothartist.com, went online earlier this year. Unable to resist such a salacious headline, we asked Steve Heward, the lab’s owner and chief artist, for the real story.

“I studied as a portrait painter at the University of Utah in the 1970s,” Steve explained. “When I started working at a dental lab as the head ceramist, I wanted to show both the dentists and the patients what I was capable of creating on their crowns.”

Steve uses ceramic stain and a one-haired brush to paint unique portraits on to crown and bridgework, then bakes and glazes the teeth to set the designs.