Tropical Picks

This decor trip moves back to a casual and cluttered style – a cluttered style that is, according to Stephen Long, "not a contrived scheme or method, but more often a combination of beautiful and idiosyncratic items that come together to create a highly personal scenario which would be a nigthmare to move."

The resident, Bernard Knut Netz, is a German consultant to CITEM, the government’s trade and exhibitions agency. He’s also an avowed lover of individualist Filipino modern art and pop camp-kitsch. Netz is also an avid collector of new organic crafts and furniture and a generally eccentric and artsy, bohemian dweller of Malate. The effusive consultant is quick to wax lyrical about his apartment – first of its superb view of the sunset over Manila Bay, and then of the array of unique and interesting furnishings that provide comfortable companions for viewing the evening spectacle.

This Malate apartment was decorated by sheer happenstance and personal idiosyncracy. Netz had craved this flat for its unbeatable view; he even offered to buy the heavy wood and stone monoliths from the previous expat resident, which he then used as furniture! Today a huge, boat-like log serves as the sofa and a giant prehistoric stone is the coffeetable. The owner’s desk and work area are defined by a giant wooden sugar-cane grinder – complete but for the carabao, water buffalo – on which are mounted several bizarre Hindu-ritualist artworks by modern sculptor Gabby Barredo. Most of the small guestroom is occupied by an entire life-sized calesa (carriage), sans horse, but trimmed with sparkling Christmas lights lining the main frame.

* * * Ethnic Textures

Interior designer Rolando Laurena has recently settled into a sleek condominium, the work of architect Lor Calma. In this new space he merges his late 1990s’ design experience with chrome, aluminum, stainless steel and dark wenge wood with his love for ethnic traditions and textures. An indulgence, perhaps, but he proudly displays his Cordillera baskets, bulols (spirit figures) and wooden spoons. "In the 1970s, I was obsessed with collecting something that’s atin, our very own. I collected small ethnic artifacts just to appreciate their form. Then I would design a modular frame for them, to give importance to even the smallest item."

Laurena is still framing ethnic forms in his compact modern space. His square modular coffeetable is a designer work of dark and light, solid wood and glass, featuring electric lights. Cabinets and display cases for Ifugao tribal artworks double as room dividers. His colors are bold, masculine and stable: black-wenge, browns and beiges. "I’m an earth sign, Taurus, so I can’t leave the browns and blacks." Yet Laurena remains the incurable eclectic: "I still like to mix classic and ethnic styles," he explains. "I’d like to be all modern and minimal."

* * * Rustic-Chic

Within a rustic-chic framework, stylist Aida Concepcion assembles an eclectic array of contemporary furniture and accessories. In the central lanai setting against roughly-hewn Mactan stone walls are several sleek, upholstered armchairs from Yrezabal, made with the distinctive permacane. The Madame X half-moon sofa and coffeetable make a contemporary-chic statement matched by Natasha, an armchair with sinuous golden legs branching out, from its tan leather seat, like dancers’ legs on pointes. The graceful forms by Yrezabal are complemented by a bleached wood floor lamp by Padua, outstanding biomorphic table-accents by Cielito and a floral oil painting by Jose Trinidad.

The pool deck and courtyards are ideal settings for modern furniture. Two award-winning classic-moderne designs by Ched Berenguer Topacio take pride of place: the Petal lounge chair, which won a Roscoe Award in 1987 and the handsome black Matador, made of carabao hide and handbeaten wrought iron. In a cozy red brick corner, there is the masculine Orientalia which is a tailored, black leather armchair, designed by Val Padilla.

* * * Eccentric Flair

Some houses are wholeheartedly eccentric. Style-writer Elizabeth Wilhide describes it best: "The people who create them follow no fashions, adhere to no rules, and are above criticism; their houses are a genuine key to their characters. The owners exhibit an unbounded, self-indulgent confidence in their own taste, caring not for the opinion of others..."

Eccentric decoration is not a style but a state of mind. Such decorators are individualists to whom originality comes naturally and their anarchic interiors, fizzing with energy and joy, are an antidote to what is safe and conventional. The result is vibrant, quirky and not to everyone’s taste.

Epitomizing this eccentricity is a Mexican house in Quezon City, home and office of an ultra-creative Filipino. For four years, the owner worked on this home and it has evolved into a fabulous fantasy world of his own making. This irreverent and creative soul loves wild and artful things and has no use for simple forms and undecorated surfaces. He collects anything witty, funky or interesting; gathers fine artworks by his friends, and popsicle-colored folk art by a little 80-year-old lady of Pampanga. He adores hot Mexican colors in folk crafts and surreal images in fine arts, but he doesn’t hang his abundant paintings conventionally, but props them up on tables, and lines walls and floors, three deep.

His passion, however, does not stop there: this Pinoy (Filipino) eclectic is also fascinated by mythical horses and merry-go-rounds, frog figurines and pre-Columbian pots from Batangas.

Reprinted from TROPICAL INTERIORS