Wear Your Dreams: My Life in Tattoos [Signed First] by Hardy, Ed; Joel Selvin - 2013

Hardcover with dust jacket, black cloth with red spine titles, 16 by 24.1 cm, illus. endpapers, 293 pp. plus 16-pages of color and black and white photos. Near fine with only faint signs of shelf wear – appears unread. Signed by Hardy on the half-title page, and dated in the year of publication. While he may be best known today for his eponymous line of T-shirts, cigarette lighters, shot glasses, and anything else that could be emblazoned with his designs—a merchandising ploy that he had little control over—Hardy is one of the great American tattoo artists and proponent of traditional Japanese designs. From the publisher: "In Wear Your Dreams, Ed Hardy recounts his genesis as a tattoo artist and leader in the movement to recognize tattooing as a valid and rich art form, through to the ultimate transformation of his career into a multi-billion dollar branding empire. From giving colored pencil tattoos to neighborhood kids at age ten to working with legendary artists like Sailor Jerry to learning at the feet of the masters in Japan, the book explains how this Godfather of Tattoos fomented the explosion of tattoo art and how his influence can be witnessed on everyone, from countless celebs to ink-adorned rockers to butterfly-branded, stroller-pushing moms."