HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Toronto designer Joel Bray says that decorating for the holidays and dining with fine tableware is more important this year than ever

BY STEPHANIE WHITTAKER PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEX LUKEY STYLING: JOEL BRAY

CHRISTMAS 2019 was going to be different from the previous ones. Joel Bray and Andrew Dunn had always celebrated the season by visiting extended family in Bothwell, Ontario. But their aged cats were in no shape to travel, so the couple decided to celebrate the holiday at home in Toronto.

Joel, a designer who owns Joel Bray Design, decorated their home in the South Riverdale neighbourhood to make it festive and cozy. “We’ve been together for 10 years, but last year was the first Christmas when we would wake up in our own home,” he says.

They bought the 135-year-old row house four years ago and set to work breathing new life into it. “It had been badly renovated during the 1960s,” Joel says. “Then, someone bought it before we did; they gutted it with the intention of rebuilding it but then ran out of money.” That meant that the house’s Victorian architectural details had been stripped out. “The only original element left is the brick inside the fireplace.”

The house had been gutted when Joel and Andrew bought it four years ago and it had been stripped of period details. They created a new staircase. The side chairs with their original velvet upholstery were found at ReStore. “The magic is in the mix,” says Joel. Marble-topped coffee table: West Elm.

The original two-storey structure had had three bedrooms and a bathroom on its second floor. The couple added a third floor to build a guest suite, and transformed the second storey into two bedrooms and a bathroom. They also rebuilt the home’s staircase.

As Christmas approached last year, Joel created a festive, seasonal decor. “When we decorate for Christmas, we are essentially decorating over decorating. The home is already decorated, so I was adding to it,” he says. The starting point for colour was the red velvet drapery in the dining area. Joel had found the material “at a reasonable price, which meant that I could justify having special drapes just for Christmas. As it turned out, we kept them up all winter and returned to our yellow drapes in the spring.” –>

(Right) Set for four, the dining table is topped with red linen napkins that pick up the colour of the rose hips on the mantel and the red velvet drapes. The Christmas tree is decorated simply and elegantly and includes little wooden ornaments that Joel has had since childhood. The red velvet drapes were made last year for Christmas but will spend the winter at the window. Hoffman caned side chairs: Design Within Reach; walnut-topped table: vintage. (Below) A festive collection of tea caddies comes from Joel’s best friend, who lives in England. “Every year, he sends us some Fortnum and Mason tea for the holidays,” Joel says.

Sprigs of rosehips adorned the mantel. Red linen table napkins reflected the seasonal colour scheme. And the Christmas tree was decorated with ornaments that included wooden ones from Joel’s childhood.

Andrew’s parents joined the couple for the holidays, so the table was set for four. “We cooked beef tenderloin on Christmas Eve, had a traditional Christmas Day breakfast and a turkey dinner that evening,” Joel says.

(Below) The kitchen boasts a custom-built banquette, upholstered in velvet from Romo fabrics. The countertop and backsplash are honed Carrara marble.

This year will be another quiet holiday. Because of the COVID-19 restrictions, most people will spend Christmas without the company of extended family and friends. And this designer recommends that it’s a good idea to decorate as if to celebrate with others. “There’s never been a better reason to bring out the best china and fine crystal,” Joel says. “We don’t use it daily but we will use it at Christmas because it’s uplifting. This year, we have to do for ourselves what we would normally do for others. We should not stray from those traditions.”

Whatever holiday we celebrate around the winter solstice season—Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Yule, Hogmanay, or Divali—this is excellent advice for the end of a strange and extraordinary year.

THE VASTNESS OF TINY THINGS

A Prince Edward Island photographer captures images of oysters to create unusual and fascinating artworks

BY ELISABETH KALBFUSS

DEBBIE BRADY IS PASSIONATE about oysters. It’s not their taste or texture—in fact, she never eats them. It’s the beauty she finds in their shells: the lines, unexpected shadows and shades of colour that are invisible until she searches out and exposes them in her photography.

Living on the Oyster Coast in Prince Edward Island, and armed with a new macro camera lens, Brady decided it was only natural that as she explored the up-close intricacies of the world around her, she would turn her eye to the shells on nearby beaches. “If I can get to the shore, it’s my happy place,” she says. “I looked at weathered oyster shells; it was so exciting. They had this beautiful texture.” Other subjects came and went, but her fascination with oyster shells kept growing.

Each of her works magnifies a tiny portion of the shell—sometimes no more than a quarter-inch section—until it is unrecognizable as a mollusk. Instead, it resembles much larger views: seascapes or views of space. “It looks like a galaxy or a satellite view of the earth,” Brady says of much of her work. “The smallest of things and the largest of things come full circle in an oyster shell.” –>

Exuberant, Malpeque in room

Now 66, Brady realized she wanted a life in the arts during her third year as a nursing student at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “I met somebody creating art and thought ‘Oh my goodness, I’m doing the wrong thing,’ ” she recalls.

Not wanting to abandon her program so close to the end, she stuck with nursing, graduated, and then spent years as a stayat-home mother raising four boys in Tyne Valley, P.E.I., surrounded by an apple orchard. When her youngest child started junior high school, Brady began commuting to Charlottetown to study graphic design at Holland College. “I wasn’t sure what that was,” she admits, but it sounded as though it had some connection to art, so off she went. She spent the next two decades running a graphic design business out of her home. Then, after having directed her share of photo shoots as part of her business, she decided that her place was behind the camera, not beside it.

She bought a DSLR camera and a macro lens, and confesses that for a while, she didn’t dare switch it out of the “auto” setting. She read manuals and photography books, but the basic concepts of changing f-stops and shutter speeds remained a mystery, until one day, when she was at a photography workshop and it all suddenly clicked.

Her work is more than simple images that are photographed and enlarged. At high levels of magnification, only a fraction of each image is in focus, which can require as many as 72 individual images, taken 0.3 millimetres apart, digitally assembled into one, to create an in-focus composite of that one tiny portion of the shell. –>

Metamorphosis, St Chrysostome High Tide, Cascumpec

Enchanted, Sandhills

To find the images she wants to photograph, she uses her camera lens to scan the entire surface of each shell she collects, looking for the right view. She describes how she found the section of shell she photographed for the artwork she calls Enchanted, which has a fairytale-like feel. “I was scanning part of it, having a cup of tea and going through a collection of shells, saying, ‘That’s no good; this has potential.’ As I got to the end of it and I came to a halt, all of a sudden, things just made sense visually,” she says.

Sea Squall, Savage Harbour inspiration shell

Sea Squall, Savage Harbour

Each piece Brady sells is accompanied by a photo of the original shell, information about where it was sourced, and a highlight marking the section that she photographed.

The more she studied oysters visually, the more curious she grew about these creatures, and visited aqua farmers for what one called her “oysters 101 lesson.” She even went out on a fishing boat “tonging”: harvesting wild oysters with tools that look like long-handled rakes.

Photo by Caley Joy Photography

Brady, an award-winning accredited member of Professional Photographers of Canada, says the support she received early on from people involved in the oyster industry and art community helped to reinforce the feeling that she was on the right track. She says she loves getting feedback from clients and visitors to her home gallery. One comment left by a visitor seemed very apt and has stayed with her: “It’s humbling to get a glimpse of an unseen world that was always in plain view.”

Debbie Brady’s photographs can be seen at www.oysterart.ca

LUXURIOUS LIVING

A Toronto designer adds glamour and warmth to a King West loft

BY WENDY HELFENBAUM PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE CHAJECKI STYLING: SHIVA KHALILNIA

(Left) In the hallway, the console table’s acrylic legs do not overpower the narrow space. An oversized mirror features an inlaid crack with gold leaf, and is flanked by matching lamps. (Right) An iron bust with hundreds of hand-applied butterflies sits atop a white marble base. “We loved this piece and thought, ‘What’s better than having the butterfly lady greet you when you come in?’ ” says Khalilnia.

WITH THEIR EXPOSED CONCRETE

ceilings and pillars, lofts can often feel cold and unwelcoming. So Shiva Khalilnia was determined to warm things up with plush furnishings, rich textures and hits of gold throughout the 2,200-square-foot condo she recently transformed for her clients.

“They wanted a space that was conducive to entertaining, so I wanted everything to be kind of sexy, dim, very sophisticated yet practical, elegant and usable. Nothing was too delicate,” says Khalilnia, the owner of Import Temptations, a Toronto furniture and accessories store.

Khalilnia worked with the existing white oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, and while the long, narrow entry hall and its imposing pillars posed a particular design challenge, she saw it as an exciting opportunity. “When I first walked down that huge hallway, my mind was just racing,” she recalls. “I wanted it to have that super wow factor, as if it were a 100-foot gallery.”

To that end, Khalilnia hung large acrylic and gold-leafed prints down the hallway and an oversized mirror with a gold-leaf crack. They share space with a sleek console table, topped with wrought iron, and antique gold-leaf lamps. She also perched an eclectic iron sculpture atop a marble pedestal to greet visitors. “We wanted art that brought a little bit of life to the hallway, but because you can’t look at it straight on, we couldn’t hang anything that had a lot of perspective,” she explains.

Once the chosen black walnut kitchen cabinets were in place, Khalilnia focused on the finishing touches, including a Belvedere leathered granite waterfall island and matching backsplash. “The homeowner originally wanted a light counter, but we decided on this dark, stunning one, which is hard-wearing, plus it doesn’t show stains,” says Khalilnia.

Italian silk-velvet bar stools bring a jolt of pink to the palette. “When you enter the space and come down that beautiful hallway, it’s kind of exciting when your eye hits these hot pink, heavenly bar stools,” says Khalilnia. –>

To brighten up the deep brown and black hues in the kitchen, designer Shiva Khalilnia added four bar stools upholstered with rich pink fabric. The gold stretchers connecting the legs mimic the metallic accents throughout the loft.

Around the glass dining table with its solid brass base, Khalilnia placed chairs that spoke to the homeowner’s passion for automobiles. “He loves cars, and the diamond quilted stitching on the fabric dining room chairs looks like the stitching on a luxury car, which makes them beautiful without feeling too heavy, like leather,” she explains.

An intricately carved Canaletto walnut sideboard from Italy lends depth and texture without taking up a large footprint. The homeowner chose commanding artwork by Toronto artist Ramona Nordal, and Khalilnia decided to showcase it above the sideboard against a black velvet curtain. Paired with two gold lamps and a display of greenery, this area provides a lovely focal point when the owners entertain.

(Below) “I love the colour and the texture of these, because they add just a little bit of warmth and bling without being too busy,” the designer says.

(Above, left) The olive-green tufted sofa features luxe throw pillows with a gold foil appliqué. “They’re very distinctive yet simple, and provide a little bit of interest,” says Khalilnia. (Above, right) Two chic leather swivel chairs seem to float in the space, while offering the perfect spot to sip cocktails.

In the living room, the homeowners wanted a comfortable space in which to lounge, read and watch television that could also double as an elegant setting for guests. “For the sofas, we decided on a beautiful, warm olive-green tone,” says Khalilnia. “It’s got a lot of comfort, yet it’s chic and sleek. It’s tufted but it’s not fussy. They sit there every day.”

Two Italian leather armchairs feature a curved brass base that feels light yet substantial, adds the designer. “These are great drinking chairs. They’re so comfortable when you sit and swivel in them. They’re very stylized, but uncomplicated,” says Khalilnia.

Above the sofa, the designer hung two giclée prints from the ceiling to add depth and perspective to the living room area. “Everything’s kind of low, and sometimes it’s nice to draw your eye up higher. I love the richness, warmth and texture in the art,” she says.

By layering softly hued area rugs, plants and luxurious fabric, Khalilnia created a welcoming oasis in the heart of the city. “I love the feeling this apartment gives me: There’s warmth, there’s happiness, movement and colour,” she says. “Even the chandeliers make me happy. In the evenings with the lights on, it’s so magical. All the warm elements make me want to stay, have a drink and enjoy.”