A studio born
of stillness.

It started in a rented room
with one machine.

Shawn Kay Davies began tattooing in Nairobi in 2012, working out of a small space with a single traditional coil machine and a notebook full of botanical sketches. There was no branding, no website, no Instagram. Just word of mouth, and a reputation for taking longer than anyone else to get a piece right.

By 2016 he had a waiting list. By 2020 he had a small studio in Westlands. In 2024 INKzen Studios opened its permanent home at Hurlingham Park — a space designed from the floor up to feel less like a clinic and more like a private library.

The studio has always taken one client at a time. That has never changed.

These aren't marketing words. They're the criteria Shawn uses to decide whether to take on a piece — and whether a client is ready to receive one.

The name

The artist

One artist.
One client at a time.

INKzen has never had a guest artist programme, a second chair, or a junior tattooist. Every piece that leaves this studio was made by the same hands.

That's a constraint Shawn chose deliberately — and has defended every time someone offered to scale it.