Archive Note
Lal Hardy, born in London in 1958, is a central figure in modern British tattooing, sometimes called the man who tattooed London. He learned to tattoo in the mid-1970s, his first teacher the Scottish tattooist Big Jock on Pentonville Road at Kings Cross, and opened New Wave Tattoo in Muswell Hill, north London, in 1979 at the age of twenty-one. He helped move the British scene from working-class maritime shops toward contemporary custom studios, championed hygiene and custom artwork, served as secretary of the Association of Professional Tattoo Artists for fifteen years, organized conventions, and authored several books on tattoo culture and history, including the Mammoth collections and Tattoo: An Illustrated Miscellany.