This circa 1900 Carlo Bugatti chair flanked by a 1960s Murano lamp and a carved Maori war canoe (from her home country of New Zealand) is typical of Nunnerley's approach to interior design. She assembles interesting pieces from auction houses alongside work made by her studio or commissioned from a range of Parisian ateliers, with whom she has built up relationships over the years.
Image courtesy of Giorgio Baroni.The overall effect of Sandra Nunnerley’s apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side is of mannered calm, balance, and self-assured chic.
After purchasing the fifth floor of a Beaux-Arts town house near Central Park, she gutted the apartments and turned the rear into her bedroom and study. By adding large French windows to bring in more light, she solved a structural issue common to many townhouses. With light only entering from front and back, the middle can be left feeling enclosed and dark.
Nunnerley knocked down walls in the high-ceilinged front apartment to create a perfectly square room: “There’s something restful about the clarity of those proportions,” she says. “I love to use simple things — I could take a beautiful piece of driftwood off the beach and put it next to a Giacometti sculpture. It’s the juxtaposition, the variety of things that you work with.”
