MixMasters

Sum up interior design today, and you could quote Cole Porter: Anything goes. Picture rooms filled with seeming opposites. Real and fake. Old and new. Pricey and dirt-cheap. Neutral and neon bright. In fact, not since the last fin de siecle, when the Victorians combined disparate furnishings with abandon, have so many decorating styles been embraced at once. Here, three very different spaces share the magic that’s in the mix.

GLOBAL VILLAGER

For David Cruz, home is a cross-cultural melange of furnishings gleaned from factories, flea markets and auction houses around the world. And no wonder. Cruz is a partner with Adam Blackman in Blackman-Cruz, the La Cienega Boulevard antiques shop offering such dramatic and often quirky items as floor lamps from Hearst Castle, merry-go-round mirrors, industrial steel furniture from the ’20 and ‘30s, even prison carvings from Brazil.

In Cruz’s three-level Santa Monica condo, that same flair for the unusual object with an international flavor crops up in rooms filled with Mexican santos and Zairian pillows, Cambodian baskets and Japanese florist’s insects, a French restaurant screen from the ‘20s and a giant shell from the ocean floor. When Cruz buys anything, his criteria are good design and uniqueness. “But most important,” he says, “I have to have an emotional reaction to it.”

He delights in composing still lifes of his treasures “a la [assemblage] artist Joseph Cornell.” For example, Cruz has mounted on individual stands the head from a 19th century Mexican statue of a virgin, various santos halos and a large vintage camera lens so that they can keep company on a steel cabinet in the living room. He also salvages old pieces at home and at work with a recycling ethic to suit the environmentally conscious ‘90s. Obsolete machine parts and Mexican corn grinders made of volcanic rock become lamps; old doors reappear as tables and armoires. “I like it when a thing lends itself to be something else,” he says.

What drives the Cruz aesthetic? “In L.A., everything is so new, so disposable. Old things give us a sense of permanence. Besides, a space gets tastier with interesting things.”

20TH CENTURY UNLIMITED:

In one of Southern California’s ubiquitous 1940s stucco bungalows, Los Angeles designer Randy Franks has created a home that epitomizes a modern point of view. Interiors devoid of architectural detail come to life with a bold palette and sophisticated 20th century furniture. The result: a dazzling mix for the ‘90s and beyond.

“Usually, you start with a piece of furniture or artwork, then pull colors from that. Here, the color came first,” Franks says. His clients, artist representative Kathleen Cornell and husband Chuck Bennett, a creative director at TBWA Chiat/Day, have strong backgrounds in art and architecture and approached their small one-bedroom house like a three-dimensional canvas. “We began with the living room, where we knew we wanted yellow,” Franks recalls. So he, Cornell and Bennett painted five shades on the walls to observe the colors over several days. Once the trio decided on lemon yellow, they picked tangerine for the dining room, cactus for the dressing area and powder blue for the master bedroom and bath.

The mid- to late-20th century furnishings are just as compelling as the color scheme. “They act as the room’s architecture,” Franks says. But before any of the pieces could be included, each required everyone’s vote. “We pushed and pulled each other to come up with the ultimate design.” Eventually, the collaborators wound up with a “Who’s Who” of modern design: sleek Piero Fornasetti “Sole” chairs and tubular Massimo Iosa Ghini chairs in the dining room, Hans Wegner “Ox” chairs and Christian Liaigre tables in the den. The living room features a stunning Garouste & Bonetti white-gold-leafed oval chest topped by the couple’s high-low collection of silver and a Fornasetti-decorated Gio Ponti secretary bearing trompe l’oeil scenes of a Genoese palace, named, appropriately, “Architettura.”

Edited to the bone and starkly dramatic because of that, the Cornell-Bennett residence represents interior design for a new age. As Cornell puts it: “Every piece is a work of art that can stand on its own.”

ROMANTIC MELODY

I was such a purist in my first house,” says Marsha Brander, who once filled a previous home exclusively with Shaker furniture. “Today, I don’t have one look.” Instead, she and husband Martin, owners of a company that manufactures a women’s clothing line called Democracy, prefer timeless pieces and neutral colors for their renovated Tuscan villa-style home in Brentwood Park.

“My first love is antiques,” says Brander, who chose Los Angeles designer Thomas Beeton because of his “undecorated approach” to blending periods and styles. Beeton credits his five years working with well-known antiques dealer G.R. Durenberger with teaching him the art of designing with antiques. “Antiques are to be used, lived with, moved around, enjoyed,” says Beeton, who juxtaposes humble, less expensive objects and rare, pedigreed pieces. In the Branders’ dining room, for instance, a three-paneled department-store mirror purchased at a Santa Barbara flea market hangs behind a French Empire mantel clock that dates from the 1800s.

For additional historical texture and romance, Beeton likes to use architectural remnants throughout his projects. A 14th century Spanish door with ornate hardware has been installed as the front entry. Several turn-of-the-century American Doric columns line the foyer and master bedroom. And weathered shutters from a turn-of-the-century Parisian building--the old street number, “300,” still visible--hang indoors to frame windows in the living room.

Beeton is equally adept at recycling his clients’ existing furnishings. He gutted an electric light fixture, installed candles and moved it from the hall to a place of honor over the dining room table. Likewise, he gave new life to a pair of the Branders’ Donghia chairs by reupholstering them in a vintage Art Deco fabric for the dining room. Another pair were refinished and outfitted with skirted slipcovers for duty elsewhere. “I don’t believe in throwing anything away if I can help it,” Beeton says. Words of wisdom for anyone who wants a home that will stand the test of time.