Inside the Maker-Focused Town House of a New York City Interior Designer

“I love great design. I love great artisans,” says Judy Dunne, founder of SoHo-based design firm Butter and Eggs. It’s part of the reason why she enthusiastically jumped at the chance to move into one of the three-story town houses her real estate developer husband was constructing with BKSK Architects (Joe Vance of JV Architects served as the architect), despite only having lived in the loft they had both painstakingly been working on since 2018. “A 2.0 version,” the designer says of her second go at decorating her own space. “This really is my lab.”

Turning the couple’s move to the West Village into a chance to experiment, Dunne, who holds a master’s degree in industrial design from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, chose to collaborate with a host of makers. It was not an uncommon practice to team up with artisans when creating spaces for her clients and she wanted to do the same for her abode. Without client restrictions, she was free to choose some of her favorites. “I took my top 10 hit list and was like, ‘I must work with them for my own home,’” she says, including craftspeople like Caleb Woodard and Corey and Keren Springer of Wüd on the list.

Austin-based Kyle Bunting, who specializes in cowhide rugs, was another one of the artisans Dunne chose to collaborate with. The decorator’s search for an antique Chinese Art Deco rug large enough to fit the area she wanted covered in her living room came up short, so she began exploring the idea of of a rug with archetypal Chinese Art Deco motifs on individually dyed and stitched-together cowhide instead of the traditional thick, plushy material. It turned out to be one of her favorite pieces and the driving force behind the room’s decor.

Over in the dining room, a playful linking of the minds between Dunne and multidisciplinary artist and designer Christina Z. Antonio produced a creamy light fixture that hangs from the ceiling, bringing a bit of whimsy to a very elegant space. “It is, to me, like candy. Delicious is my favorite word for it. The colors of the globes are just so soft and yummy,” Dunne says.

Soft is a great way to describe the home in general. Although no one color, object, or style overpowers a room, the spaces do not fall flat. In a zone like the living room, it’s color that causes the eye to travel. But in the kitchen, dining room, and even the bathroom, polished nickel, bronze, and brass play nice with wood, marble, and glass, with only slight shifts in tone; here, it’s the “subtle materiality,” as Dunne describes it, that allows these rooms to maintain a pleasant rhythm.

Even without the metals, Dunne’s choice of materials give off a light, easy atmosphere. Like in the primary bedroom, the texture of a vintage Tulipan chandelier complements the mohair of a vintage Vladimir Kagan sofa and the boucle of the Osborne & Little–wrapped Odile bench by Lulu & Georgia—that kind of sensitivity makes space for the weighty pale olive drapes with raindrop-like shimmers that cover the room’s 11-foot windows. “I think as New Yorkers—as humans today—having an oasis is important,” she says of the room.

As an interior designer, Dunne believes that her most important job is that of a curator. “I don’t work on-trend. I work to build a beautiful curated collection for someone,” she says. “I’m always sensitive and thinking about not just cool materials, but how the owners are going to live in a space. How are the materials going to perform?” In this case, Dunne used the same selective and reflective energy she usually gives her clients to create a chic, design-centric haven built on collaboration and harmony.