Abraham Gabriel

Abraham Gabriel

Gabriel Abraham was born in Lausanne, Switzerland and grew up in Aix-en-Provence to a French mother and Italian father. Full of wanderlust, he relished his childhood summers spent on the Italian Riviera and especially treasured the years of accompanying his physician father, a cruise ship doctor, sailing the Mediterranean to exotic ports in the 1970s. This propelled him at 18 to film school in London and then to embark on a path to a film career, ultimately moving to Los Angeles in 1995. There, an encounter with Tarantino got him his first gig on the set of Snake Eyes, Abel Ferrara’s first Hollywood film. Abraham’s career in film and advertising took off with countless commercial and indie projects, art directing films such as Amat Escalante’s Los Bastardos, a hit at Cannes in 2008. Things took a professional turn when he moved into the Bubeshko Apartments designed by Rudolph Schindler. He began making lamps to furnish its modernist interior. He then started a blog, ‘Atelier’, about his inspirations and Commune Design spotted the lamps he was making. In 2010, Commune awarded the job of manufacturing all the decorative lights for the ACE Hotel Downtown LA to Atelier de Troupe, Abraham’s newly named business. Where did the ‘de Troupe’ come from? Teenage memories. In the south of France, he was fascinated by the incredible stories of the retired soldiers of the Foreign Legion at a local veterans home. Each week he went away with captivating anecdotes and his pockets full of tax-free Gauloises de Troupe, the official cigarettes of the French troops.