ELECTRIC ECLECTIC | RCnew2020

Electric eclectic: Cabrera's recipe

A pinch of this, a touch of that - and mix well

David Lasker

National Post

Mies meets Mardi Gras. Thus does interior designer Rafaell Cabrera describe his distinctive personal style in two recent projects: his own Toronto apartment and the renovation of a 1950s, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in New Jersey.

"Miesien," of course, is that indispensable design-speak term alluding to the rigorous Modernism epitomized by Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe, designer of New York's celebrated Seagram Building and Toronto's T-D Centre. Every designer has to come to terms with the enduring hegemony of Modernism as an aesthetic vocabulary. Mr. Cabrera just does it with more fun and flair than most.

He grew up in Toronto and graduated from the University of Manitoba interior-design program in 1974. But he was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the land, he says, of "calypso, Carnival and steel band." He retains island touches, such as the lilting accent and a relaxed yet ebullient personality. Indeed, he could be sent by Central Casting to act in a Caribbean tourism commercial.

As owner of Rafaell Cabrera International (www.rafaellcabrera.com), he has clients in North America, Europe and the Caribbean. His work has appeared in Architectural Digest and Canadian Interiors.

Director of visual planning, store design and construction for MAC Cosmetics from 1984 to 1997, he oversaw the look of some 80 stores around the world. He introduced a new look to cosmetics displayers, by using metal. "Now it's normal," he says. "We were copied en masse. I saw direct rip-offs of my design. But they couldn't emulate our rotary finish. We constructed a special machine to create its three-dimensional, serpentine pattern."

As a hair-and-makeup artist for Miramax Films at the Toronto International Film Festival, Mr. Cabrera beautified Hollywood stars Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn and Life is Beautiful director Roberto Benigni.

Given his theatrical bent, Mr. Cabrera's Toronto pied-a-terre (he also lives in Miami) abounds in showpieces.

The 875-square-foot apartment, high up in a Yonge Street aerie, boasts a panoramic view of downtown penthouses, Rosedale mansions and North York towers. "I have amassed here a collection of furnishings and art that says who I am and makes me feel comfortable."

Savvy home decorators wanting to play pasticheur will notice how he has used contemporary classics as a foil and disciplining force to pull together a highly eclectic decor.

Yes, Mr. Cabrera owns the de rigueur, design-cognoscenti icons. In the persimmon-painted foyer reposes Michele de Lucchi's First Chair, that toy-like 1983 Memphis icon comprising a round, tubular metal stool joined to a metal Hula Hoop rising up at a 45-degree angle. The hoop has three painted wood discs at sides and centre that look like vestigial back and arm rests.

There are several Tizio lamps, the ubiquitous halogen fixture designed by Richard Sapper and introduced by Artemide in 1970, with the counterweight mechanism that resembles a miniature oil pump.

Mies's S-shaped, tubular steel MR chairs flank the dinner table. As Tom Wolfe wrote in From Our House to Bauhaus, the MR was "the second-most famous chair designed in the twentieth century, [Mies's] own Barcelona chair being first, but also one of the five most disastrously designed, so that by the time the main course arrived, at least one guest had pitched face forward into the lobster bisque."

These contemporary classics share space with a diverse mix of items. The entry hall has a figurehead-topped, carved Art Nouveau mirror frame festooned in sinuous, vegetal Rococo swirls after the fashion of Hector Guimard's entrances for the Paris Metro station entrances. On the facing wall hangs a 1920s Art Deco tapestry of a jungle scene with, cranes, parrots and florals.

In the living-dining area, hung with African and Thai masks, a Victorian ebony fireplace screen replete with delicate filigree chinoiserie visually divides the room into separate zones.

A Cabrera-designed, Egyptian Deco silkscreened frieze marches along the upper walls.

Mr. Cabrera commissioned artist Andrew Bent to paint the large, Cubist-inspired canvases Danse Bacchanal and Danse Carnival. "I asked for colour and vibrancy, but not so much that I couldn't live with the paintings or mix them with my other artworks," Mr. Cabrera says.

More off-beat is the Art Deco floor lamp with a lampshade commissioned from Canadian designer Stephen Stanish. Well, "lampshade" doesn't do justice to what resembles an inverted bowl of fruit made of semiprecious stones and coloured crystals.

Mr. Cabrera had the chance to work on a grander scale during the renovation for a Toys 'R' Us executive who owned a 1950s, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in Ridgewood, N.J.

The open-plan, 4,200-sq.-ft., three-level house sits atop a ridge. At night, when guests drive up, they see a shining glass pavilion. The abundant natural light gave Mr. Cabrera licence to choose a muted, smoky colour scheme. There are no bright colours or jewel tones. Bronze and gold tints prevail -- a palette associated more with sophisticated restaurants and lounges than private residences. "It melds with all the wood and stone and other natural materials in the house," he says.

A long lanai -- a wide, verandah-like hallway -- separates the living-dining area from the front outside wall. The Moorish chandeliers hanging in the lanai and the Alhambra-like grille set into the lanai's inner wall add a casbah flavour.

The grille diffuses the light and, together with the low-key colour palette, gives a soft-focus effect.

In the master bedroom, the ghost of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann hovers. The French Art Deco designer died in 1933, but his influence looms large on contemporary designers, not least Cabrera, who shares Ruhlmann's penchant for refined, simple forms made luxurious by the application of costly, exotic materials such as macassar ebony, shagreen (sharkskin) marquetry and glittering mica veneer.

The bed and the wall behind it, a specialty-painting tour-de-force, feature a bamboo motif outlined on a subtle checkerboard pattern. "One of New York's finest special-effects painters spent a month doing the wonderful hand-done textures," Mr. Cabrera says. "There are 12 layers of gold leaf, Dutch gold [copper-rich brass foil], silver and greens and lavenders. It's all striated so that if you look closely, the finish has the feeling of natural foliage."

Underfoot, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed carpet with a strong graphic pattern covers the floors throughout all the main rooms in the house, tying together its many rich tableaux.