Art feels right at home

A FIVE-STORY BUILDING IN LONDON, FILLED WITH PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, DRAWINGS. AN (ALMOST) MUSEUM-LIKE SPACE FOR TWO TRULY UNCOMMON COLLECTORS.

Simon and Michaela de Pury are not just any couple. He is known as the art auctioneer par excellence, while she was Senior Director of the auction house they founded, only to leave it at the end of 2012, to open a new consulting company, de Pury de Pury. Their London home is in a five-story brick building in Mayfair, constructed in 1880, with completely redesigned interiors. Besides the great location, they were looking for a house that would be ready for immediate use, and they found it in this recently renovated building. Like many homes in London, it is organized vertically. The space where the couple spends the most time, they say, is on the staircase. The five levels contain living and dining rooms, two kitchens, an office, an attic storeroom, three bedrooms with baths, and a playroom for their younger daughter, who is nearly seven. The house has very high ceilings, a fundamental factor to avoid claustrophobia and to make it easy to hang art. The art in the rooms changes often, in the awareness that a single work can have an influence on the perception of a space. The items are carefully chosen, juxtaposed to coexist with ease. «I spend a lot of time in storerooms, the worst way to look at art. You need a lot of imagination to understand its true potential», Simon explains. The same care goes into the selection of objects, with the eye of consummate collectors. «Right now I like African furniture. I also love glass and ceramics. I like to make discoveries: I bought objects by Marc Newson before he started working with Gagosian. As for artists, my intuition was also right in the cases of Christopher Wool and Richard Prince».