Reprint
Tattoo Travel Book, published by Don Ed Hardy, is an elegant hardcover facsimile of an actual album of tattoo flash that Ben Corday made for himself while he was on the road as a tattoo artist and carnival tall man. These fine-line ink and watercolor designs, created in the 1910s and early 1920s, were painted individually and glued into a leather-bound souvenir photo album. Tattoo Travel Book contains 26 pages of that flash (141 designs in all) reproduced in the original size.
Ben Corday (1875-1938) was born in England but came to America in the early 20th Century. Tattooing mainly in the US, Corday was a leading practitioner of the sophisticated design style of tattooing's first "golden age" in the late 19th-early 20th century and his work is done with an especially graceful flare.
Besides Corday's classic images, this book includes photos and pitch cards of Corday and his work as well as a short introduction by Ed Hardy. Lyle Tuttle supplied a rare copy of Corday's obituary from the 1938 Los Angeles Times and also contributed invaluable historic information.
