Product Description

At the age of ten, Don Ed Hardy recognized the unique force of tattoo art. Growing up in the centre of 1950s and early 60s California pop culture, he went on to earn an art school degree and then learned to tattoo by apprenticing himself to master artists. Over the past forty years Hardy has revolutionized this ancient tradition while also bringing fresh energy to the classical mediums of painting, printmaking and ceramics through his exhibitions across the United States and abroad. His technical brilliance and mesmerizing imagery have created an indelible style on skin and in the worlds of fashion and contemporary art. Hardy's sense of design is at once startling, seductive, frightening, and enchanting, ranscending categories of time and culture, high and low.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31707 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-06
• Original language: German, English, French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 143 pages

Customer Reviews

The Ed Hardy Brand
I must say at the start that I do not have any tattoos, and to be honest, I don't want any, and there is nothing in this book that would convince me otherwise. I have always thought of tattoos as a form of human graffiti - mind you, most of the people I know who have tats have the black thorn-type tats around arms, legs and across shoulders; names of family (in black); and a skull and cross bones (also in black). The only other one I know has that many tats that he looks like he fell asleep in a pile of wet newspapers and the print came off and is all blurred together. None of these would make me want to get inked myself, and definitely not the contents of this book.

Ed Hardy was a cult name amongst my friends with tattoos, unfortunately his brand image seems to be losing some of it's shine, mainly due to the commercialisation of what had been a THE name in the inking world. The brand now extends into mugs, etc, as well as his own clothes line.

There is a very limited biography (if something that short can be called a biography). This life summary is then repeated in French and German, which had the unfortunate affect of making me think of the multi-lingual DIY guides - the type which you get in flat pack furniture, only this is flashier and bound. I did wonder if this duplication had been done to save money, to pad out the book, or both.

The book itself is half foolscap size (slightly shorter, and wider than A5) which is a true disadvantage to some of the more intricate designs - too much detail is lost.

The other designs show that this man learnt his trade under a man who inked the service personnel (mainly navy from the designs) and bikers. To be honest I can see why he gave up tattooing, some of the images wouldn't have looked out of place in WW2, although such as the Chinese influenced dragons are the sort of thing you would expect to see on antique oriental screens (although I say this with a degree of trepidation as you cannot see the detail, if any).

It could have been so much more if the effort had been put in.

Interesting but for Ed fans only
The book starts with some 7 pages describing Ed's ife and career, followed by the same text in German and French. The rest of the book is an overview of several Ed designs, but mostly old ones. they are interesting if zou are a fan, but you wont pick a design for yourself from this, unless you are into gorillas, pin up girls etc.

designs are old but interesting from a tattoo history point of view.

All flash, little art... basic tattoo book with some surprising inspirations
Ed Hardy is an American tattoo artist born and raised in Southern California in 1945 and this book offers a simplistic retrospective of some of his work. It is not the most groundbreaking of collections but still the insight on offer is good enough to give you a taster and possibly start an interest to research further as this volume only provides a 7 page background on the artist that then is oddly repeated twice in two other languages. But at the end of the day what anyone who is buying an 'ink' book wants to know about is the display and range of the photographic collection contained within its pages. The small compact size of the book [around the A5 mark] means that some of the work has been compressed to fit and this at times causes a loss in detail for example a 12 foot scroll featuring a series of dragons is almost impossible to distinguish. In other places the 'flash art' style of much of Ed's work - though not my own taste - is very clear and given generally an image per page. As previously mentioned I am not a fan of Ed's tattoo work, but if you like old school Americana with basic Japanese influences then this surely would suit and inspire you. With that said I did find the canvas based art work of Ed's contained in the collection to be stunning and inspiring at times and it made want to seek out more. It's not the best tattoo art book on the market but for the right price its a nice, albeit basic, reference book.