03 · Private Residence
Pearl Mansion
A second-floor apartment on the rue de Verneuil, returned to its 1868 proportions and furnished for a single life.
- Location
- Mysore, India
- Year
- 2024
- Area
- 295 m²
- Duration
- 16 months
A writer, recently alone, wanted an apartment that felt neither empty nor busy. The brief consisted of one sentence: "Somewhere I can think."
The plan was reduced from six rooms to four. The parquet was lifted, repaired and relaid; the cornices recast from surviving fragments. Furniture was kept deliberately sparse — twenty-two pieces in total, each chosen over eleven months.
- Heritage restoration
- Interior architecture
- Furniture curation
- Styling
- Warm White#FAF7F2
- Parchment#E7DDCE
- Champagne#CBB78F
- Ink#232120
- Point de Hongrie oak
- Original boards, repaired and relaid
- Lime plaster cornice
- Recast from three surviving fragments
- Champagne mohair velvet
- Woven in Lyon
- Grand Antique marble
- Console top, single slab
What 1868 intended
Beneath four layers of later partitioning we found the original enfilade intact. Restoring it was less a design decision than an act of listening.
Fewer rooms, better ones
Six rooms became four. The gained volume went entirely to the salon, which now runs the full width of the building.
Repair, not replacement
Eighty-one percent of the original parquet was saved. The remainder was sourced from a demolished building in the 11e, matched for age and grain.
Twenty-two pieces
Furniture was acquired slowly and never in sets: a 1952 Danish desk, a French Empire mirror, a contemporary bouclé chair. The only rule was that nothing should match.
Somewhere to think
The apartment is largely silent. Rugs were chosen for acoustic absorption as much as appearance; the curtains are heavy enough to soften the boulevard.
What a room was, and what it became.
Drag the handle, or use the arrow keys, to move between the survey photograph and the finished room.
The salon, before and after restoration
- Interior Architecture
- Nesva Studio
- Heritage Consultant
- Cabinet Rousset
- Plasterwork
- Ateliers Gohard
- Photography
- Camille Aubert
Next Project
The Sienna Villa
Bengaluru · 2023
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- Telephone
- +91 9999512096
- Studios
- India
- Availability
- Commissions worldwide
All enquiries are handled in confidence. A significant portion of our work is never published; where discretion is required, we operate under private terms and no imagery leaves the studio.