Sagittarius, painting by Tabby Booth

Born in the UK, Tabby Booth grew up between the sea and the countryside, nurtured from a young age by a fascination with images, antique objects, and imaginary creatures. Her artistic world is rooted in this childhood, a blend of British folklore, sea tales, and instinctive drawing. Trained in illustration at Central Saint Martins in London, she developed a distinctive graphic style characterized by visual storytelling. For over ten years, she and her artist husband ran a children's art school, Cygnets Art School. In 2023, the couple discovered a former sailors' dungeon in Falmouth. The space became their gallery, Sailors Jail. Tabby refocused on creating art, exploring a personal visual language. Her recent works are inspired by scrimshaw, an ancient art of engraving on bone or ivory, which she reinterprets using the sgraffito technique: layering wax and paint on wood, finely engraved. Each piece is then paired with a carefully sourced antique frame, creating a play of echoes between support, form, and material. Tabby Booth's creations lie at the intersection of artwork and inhabited object. They appeal to collectors and galleries and have been featured in publications such as The World of Interiors and the Financial Times. Her work celebrates texture, the memory of materials, and the strange, narrative beauty of the everyday.