The Apartment-and-Collection That Is Home to the Interior Design Duo Orsini Daventure

Clémence Orsini and Clément Daventure. We are French, founders of the Paris-based interior design firm Orsini Daventure and are 32 and 33 years old respectively. We are partners and have been married for a few years. And there is also Pinto, our three-year-old dog.

I passed my baccalaureate in Japan and then did a year of preparatory art studies at the Atelier de Sèvres in Paris before entering the Camondo school. I loved my studies, very free and intense. After my degree, I started my professional life in a particularly creative way in stage design: I designed sets for haute couture shows. However, after two years of that, I wanted to work on more permanent and perhaps less superficial projects. So naturally, I returned to interior design. I had a very formative first experience in a super little company (the VIEWS agency), where I really learned the basics of the job. Then I collaborated with Studio KO, where I learned to unleash my creativity by working on amazing projects as part of a high-performance, international team. After these two experiences, I felt confident and ready to take the plunge.

After my high school years in Bourges, I studied at the Charpentier Academy in Paris, which prepared me for the Camondo competitive entrance exam. I met Clémence in class. After school, I went straight into Franz Potisek’s interior design studio, and I worked with him for six years. It was an extremely rewarding experience. Franz is very committed to the decorative arts and allowed me to train my eye by working with exceptional French techniques and expertise every day. Mainly in very high-end domestic projects throughout France. At the firm, we were quite unusual in that we only worked by hand, which is something I try to maintain as much as possible today.

I’m originally from Cap Ferret, but I had an international and cosmopolitan upbringing, as I lived for years in Milan, Vienna and Tokyo before coming to Paris to study. So I’ve always been between two worlds: on the one hand, the easy life and the bare feet in the sand; on the other, the bustle and opulence of the big cities. I moved fourteen times with my parents before I was eighteen and had to continually learn about new cultures and new places. My mother used to design a new interior every time, so that was a good starting point for me to do this job. I had a very open and multifaceted upbringing, lulled by the fantastic stories my father told of his childhood in Madagascar, among others. My choice to study art was never in question, although it was unheard of in my family.

It’s a bit of a cliché, but I’ve been drawing and painting since I was a kid, and I’ve always enjoyed it. My parents encouraged me very early on to express this creative side. In my earliest memories, my father would take me to the museum, and for a long time, I had the great classics of Russian music as a bedside recording (for those who know it, its real name is “The World of the Dinosaurs”). I grew up in the provinces and spent a good part of my childhood in the countryside. I realise now that this has influenced me a lot, especially in my unfailing love of old stones, French landscapes and the feeling of serenity they give me.

Faye Toogood for the multi-disciplinary and radical nature of her projects and the Peregalli studio for the ambience they create. I recently noted the name of Amelia Tavella for her rehabilitation of the convent of Saint Francis, and I find the work of Bernard Dubois is very striking at the moment. There are also quite a few wonderful Chinese agencies in the retail sector, which are coming out with highly conceptual projects, but I can’t remember the names.

I love Fabrizio Casiraghi’s work! For me, it’s a perfect blend of yesterday and today. And Studio KO, of course, they’re the best!

Prerequisite: walls and a roof, in Paris! (laughs) Seriously though, a three-room apartment with as much work required as possible, so we could finally express ourselves for our own benefit. There were no neighbourhood constraints, but we were already living in the 18th arrondissement and were delighted to find it at the foot of the Butte Montmartre. We looked for a long time: almost two years, and it was such a no-brainer that we made an offer immediately on the landing when we finished the tour. We had to plan ahead… it was very dilapidated, and we had to build a kitchen and a bathroom.

The flat is designed as a showcase to highlight our passion for collecting. The living room doesn’t get much light, and the decision was made to take it all the way with this warm colour on the walls (we call it “golden mustard”), lots of fabrics, carpets and a fireplace that gets used a lot. The bespoke kitchen is clad in stained birch combined with a coated worktop. In the living room, the fixed furniture elements, skirting boards and architraves were made by a craftsman from the Centre region. The floor and wall carpeted dressing room serves as an anteroom, the ceiling of which is covered with a fresco created by an artist friend, Dorian Zannettacci. The fully plastered bedroom and bathroom are bright rooms, and the off-white shades regulate the chromatic level of the flat. We have fun with the office, where we play with the setting and the strong line the wall hangings give. It’s ideal for stimulating creativity on Sundays. We weren’t particularly concerned with linking the rooms together, for once, but I think it works well. In any case, we live very well here!

A heterogeneous mix of pieces that we designed: our dining room table, some chairs, the bookcases, sideboards and consoles in the living room, and everything else we found from different sources: auction houses, galleries in France and Italy, but also and often from countryside flea markets and provincial Emmaus stores. Each piece of furniture, each object has a story. I don’t think there’s anything we’ve bought new in this apartment, except for the carpets, which are all from Casa Lopez. Clément paints and some of his canvases hang in the apartment. He also made a mural above the fireplace to hide the television.

A heterogeneous mix of pieces that we designed: our dining room table, some chairs, the bookcases, sideboards and consoles in the living room, and everything else we found from different sources: auction houses, galleries in France and Italy, but also and often from countryside flea markets and provincial Emmaus stores. Each piece of furniture, each object has a story. I don’t think there’s anything we’ve bought new in this apartment, except for the carpets, which are all from Casa Lopez. Clément paints and some of his canvases hang in the apartment. He also made a mural above the fireplace to hide the television.