ED HARDY
By Susanna Salk
Walking through Ed Hardy, San Francisco’s venerable decorative arts gallery, one doesn’t just get an immediate sense of Hardy’s design philosophy, but also of his life: “I want to bring together the most unexpected things,” explains Hardy, “because it is often through this juxtaposition that our visceral experience is most rewarded.”
His Henry Adams Street shop isn’t just an ode to eclecticism (think eighteenth-century Italian alongside Art Deco), but to Hardy’s amo la vita attitude. Indeed his passion for all things Italian is omnipresent in the very structure he built from scratch as a temple to the pieces he loves.
He modeled his building on Palladium villas designed by the celebrated architect, Andrea Palladio. Starting with what was once a barren railroad spur, opposite from San Francisco’s Design Center, into his own refined temple comprised of three galleries and offices off a central axis. “By taking a narrow footprint up, you create a dramatic volume,” explains Hardy, who punctuated the entrance with a pair of fifteen-foot wooden gates flanked by flamed finial piers. Front and rear walled gardens further the Italian ambiance with their three cascading wall fountains and the surrounding graceful olive trees, creeping fig, and lavender in terra cotta pots.
Hardy’s journey of exploration in the worlds of art, architecture, and history began in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan: “As a kid I was always fascinated by Mid-Western antiques such as wagon wheels and pressed American glass,” he says. But it was his annual visit to his paternal aunt in La Jolla, California that accelerated his quest for a life in antiques. “My aunt and uncle were both collectors who introduced me to Carl Yeakel, a dealer in eighteenth-century European antiques that lived in a fanciful Normandy-like chateau in Laguna Beach,” says Hardy.

Each summer, Hardy would spend time working at Yeakel’s shop, polishing silverware and learning from his mentor. After serving as a Naval officer in the Far East, Hardy attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, studying Environmental Design. During this period, he apprenticed for interior designers and became sure of one thing: He did not want to be an interior designer.

“I found it to be much more routine and less creative than I hoped,” explains Hardy. When Sotheby’s in Los Angeles tapped him to head their Oriental Works of Art Department he knew it would be the ideal finishing education. After four years, he headed to San Francisco, a city he had always loved (“even though I did not know a soul,” mentions Hardy) and the ideal place to hang his first shingle, which he did on the city’s famous Montgomery Street.

“I started with an emphasis towards Oriental and European antiques,” says Hardy, “ but now, in my third and final location, I give myself permission to buy something that doesn’t fit any category. As long as it’s imbued with a vibrant life force, I want to allow it to be celebrated as an object on its own merit.”
Hardy’s hunt for pieces takes him several times a year to Italy and France, where despite the sting of the exchange rate, he reaps the rich reward of spending time in cultures in which he says, “people are joyous about life.” When he returns home, he often heads for the hills such as Mount Tamalpais in Mill Valley or farther out to Yosemite.
“Hiking for me is like walking through nature’s cathedral,” says Hardy. And when he returns to his shop, it’s always with the hope that what has inspired him will do the same for his clientele. After all, it’s all in the mix, says Hardy. “I love to cross-pollinate time periods and countries. There’s an incredible dynamism when you selectively juxtapose pieces created two hundred years apart.”