Marc-Michaels: Venetian Influences Define The Designers' Winter Park, Florida, Mansion

Architecture by Carlos Martin, AIA
Text by Wendy Moonan
Photography by Kim Sargent

This is not a family house," Michael J. Abbott says, describing the mansion he and S. Marc Thee recently had built for themselves in Winter Park, Florida. The 12,3 00-square -foot residence has marble floors, silver-leafed ceilings, leather-upholstered furniture and a lavish media center. Abbott and Thee have happily opened their doors to five hundred guests for cocktail parties, but this is most definitely not a place for the Sesame Street set.

Abbott and Thee, partners at Marc-Michaels Interior Design, decorated the house together. A self-taught designer, Abbott moved to Winter Park in the early 1980s. Thee, the firm's lead designer, is a Florida native. He started the company with Abbott in 1985 after leaving another firm. Abbott leans toward traditional design, while Thee is a modernist.

Two years ago, when Abbott and Thee decided to build a house, they had a difficult time finding lakeside' property in Winter Park. Finally, they discovered and purchased a narrow lot, nine ty by seven hundred feet, (11 Lake Osceola. It is in one of the city's oldest residential neighborhoods, a secti(n of the winter resort established by northerners in the late nineteenth century. 'Yhe -streets are lined with brick, live oaks drip Spanish nioss, and the only noises heard are

"The house completely reflects Michael's affinity for collectibles," says Thee.

birdsong and the occasional train whistle. Abbott and Thee named the estate Palazzo delle Aquile (House of the Eagles), after a family of American bald eagles that has nested there for years.

"The site is shaped like a bowling alley, so we had to embrace axis and symmetry," says Abbott. It is a two story courtyard house with an H-shaped plan, designed by architect Carlos Martin and inspired by a study trip Abbott and Thee took to Venice, Florence and Siena a few years ago. They were particularly affected by the architecture of Venice.

These influences are apparent in the house's roofs and ogee arches but are even more pronounced in the interiors. The foyer is laid with a striking marble-and limestone checkerboard floor. A sixte enth- century French oak tall case clock and a carved oak armchair fill the space, and stone archways open into the living room.

The living room's Venetian Gothic-style windows look out onto a courtyard with a koi pond, two outdoor living spaces, a swimming pool and, in the distance, the lake. The dining room leads to an enfilade of rooms on one side of the courtyard, which includes two kitchens, a breakfast room and an outdoor bar. The library is to the right of the living room. Behind it is the master suite, which has a sitting area that also faces the courtyard. The second floor is devoted to a gym, guest suites and another, more expansive living room with a reading alcove, a balcony and a game room.

The eclectic d6cor of the house is the result of Abbott's long-standing antique collecting habit. "I don't care about periods or matching things," he says. "The house completely reflects Michael's affinity for collectibles," confirms Thee. The living room, with its cross-cut travertine floor, sixteen-foot ceilings, groin vaults and hand-carved stone columns and fireplace, forms a Gothic background for Abbott's treasures: a large oil painting of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, a pair of Louis XVI gilt berg6res, a gilt Italian console table and two Ming porcelain vases. The Donald Roller Wilson painting in the living room "is my favorite thing in the whole house," says Abbott.

stered pieces, including one covered in ostrich leather. "The upholstery is thick and deep to make the d6cor seem less serious," says Thee. "The room is formal but very comfortable.

"Two spaces in a house can be over the top: the dining and powder rooms," he continues. "That's what we did here." In the dining room, a cream-colored floral motif is stenciled on the Complexioned ceiling and the robin's-egg-blue coving. The palette complements the colors in the Venetian-style plummets and the stone floor, which has a geometric pattem composed of black granite, golden limestone and polished red Italian onyx. A wall of antiqued mirror reflects the chandelier's twinkling lights and the Neoclassical-style armchairs' silver gilt.

For the powder room, Abbott fashioned a sink out of an extravagant seventeenth century French marble fountain and surrounded it with antiqued mirror.

The mahogany-paneled library sets a different tone. "I like going from formal to informal," Thee says. It serves as a wine cellar, a media room, an office and a study. Abbott gravitates to it the moment he arrives home. "This is a place where you feel shielded from the cares of the world," he says. There, he showcases his leather-bound volumes of poetry and literary classics and his art objects, including two Tang horses sold by the John and Marble Ringling Museum of Art, a circa 1910 Tiffany Studios clock and a 600 B.c. Etruscan clay box. A platinum-leafed chandelier hangs from a circular cove in the ceiling. "It's meant to embrace you with its simplicity and scale," says Thee.

Abbott and Thee believe that "difference lies in the details." This is clear from the master suite's Venetian plasterwork walls, its Fortuny light fixtures and its custommade commode. In the sybaritic master bath, Abbott enhanced the mirror over the sink by adding an antique wood sconce. He had the legs of the vanity meticulously carved to echo the sconce.

The main kitchen combines new and traditional styles. "It's a room of opposites," Abbott says. Thee covered the oven hood in pearl white and amber Italian glass mosaic tiles to reflect the stainless-steel appliances and the shades of gold, gray and black in the granite countertops. He commissioned a floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel pantry tower with glass doors (rice paper is sandwiched between the layers of glass). Abbott exposed the cypress joists in the ceiling to add warmth to the space and give it a seventeenth-century European feeling.

The designers love experimenting. When they decided to put a fireplace in the fully furnished loggia, they reassembled a seventeenth century French stone chimneypiece. They also installed an old-fashioned southernstyle pecky cypress ceiling, as well as air-conditioning, "to add that last bit of excess," says Thee.

Michael Abbott and Marc Thee's house is a showcase of their personal tastes and a laboratory where they try out new ideas. "In your own home, you have the chance to show people that this is as good as it gets," says Abbott. "In fact, there isn't a person who has walked in here who hasn't been overwhelmed. Thank heaven Palm Beach has Mara-Lago-it makes this place look simple!"