United by Design

Inside the Wonderland Known as Liz’s Antique Hardware

Liz Gordon established Liz’s Antique Hardware, on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles, to help designers and homeowners acquire the sort of hard-to-find vintage odds and ends with which she’s obsessed. Top: Lamp and chandelier finials and sockets, both original and reproduction, sit on display in the shop.

Spend a few minutes with Liz Gordon, and you get the impression nothing catches her eye quite like a pile of hinges, handles and knobs. Ask her the origin of her Los Angeles store, Liz’s Antique Hardware, and she’ll tell you about her old warehouse in Chicago and smile when describing all the hardware that was strewn about the floor.

Gordon started that operation 37 years ago, dealing in everything from furniture to textiles to books, mostly selling wholesale to other antiques dealers from her warehouse. She was also involved in architectural salvage, which yielded doors, windows and fireplace mantels. When you pile all those materials into one place, you get a lot of hardware, too, with different metals, castings, patinas and styles all thrown together. She started organizing the little pieces that came through her warehouse, eventually selling them at the frequent trips she made to local flea markets to supplement her wholesale business. “Little by little, I learned a little bit about everything,” she says.

When she moved to San Diego, in 1986 — “I wanted to try life without winter,” she recalls  — she decided to simplify things. But anyone who’s seen the wide, wide selection of objects in her store knows that Gordon’s version of simplicity isn’t other folks’. Fifty 50-gallon drums followed her to California, all filled with hardware. She sold hooks and handles and the like out of her garage one day a week (by appointment) and had a space at an antiques mall. Once a month, she drove up to the flea markets in Long Beach and Pasadena. It was only in her fifth year in San Diego that she opened up a shop of her own.

Gordon also took classes at San Diego City College, not with an eye toward earning an official degree “but to learn for the sheer pleasure of learning,” she says, “and applying it to what I needed to know.” After three and a half years of coursework, she had gained a unique knowledge base, having tailored her studies to learn more about her particular métier. For a photography class, she snapped pictures of tarnished metal; she wrote an English paper on American antique furniture; in French class, she taught herself words — for latches, locks and fixtures — that you wouldn’t  find in a standard textbook.

Gordon reserves the main part of her shop — whose front counter sits under a variety of chandeliers and pendant lamps — for vintage and antique items. The reproductions have a separate area.

Left: A customer views row upon row of porcelain wall sconces from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. Right: A brass furniture drawer pull — one of thousands Gordon has on offer — hangs from a pegboard, wired with its matched pair.

For the most part, the shop’s Blue Room holds wall sconces and lighting dating to between 1890 and 1930, plus the occasional mid-century piece. The blue ceramic lamp base was made in Florence, Italy, in 1957.

Left: An antique faucet, similar to those created by Sherle Wagner, is in the form of a swan. Right: One of the artisans who works in the shop restores a ceiling pendant.

After one particularly grueling day at the Long Beach Antique Market, Gordon found herself sitting in the parking lot around midnight, tired and not wanting to drive back to San Diego. That expanse of black asphalt became a crossroads for her. “I need to find another way,” she remembers thinking. A week later, she moved to Los Angeles, and not long after that, she spotted a “for rent” sign in the window of her current building on La Brea. That was 24 years ago.

Before moving all her hardware into the space, she tore out its ceiling and found dozens of lighting chains hanging from the little round canopies — the plain or decorative plates that hide the electrical components. Evidently, there had been a lighting store in the building a half-century earlier. “Everything was up there in that ceiling, and I thought, ‘I guess I just went into the lighting business.’ ”


Anyone who’s seen the wide, wide selection of objects in her store knows Gordon’s version of simplicity isn’t like other folks’.


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Gordon strikes a pose in the shop’s garage, where she and her team sort, match, strip, refinish and rewire newly acquired merchandise.

All the neoclassical, Art Deco and mid-century light fixtures in her store are a big draw for customers, but it’s the endless racks of antique hardware that make them nostalgic for their great-grandmothers’ houses. Liz’s is the place to go if you need a glass doorknob or brass mortise lock — and don’t forget the strike plate. Her regular clients include such noted California designers as Madeline Stuart, Kelly Wearstler, Jane Hallworth, Cliff Fong, Tim Barber, Randy Franks and Michael Berman.

“Everything we find at Liz’s is equivalent to a writer finding le mot juste,” says Stuart, whose firm is known for incorporating vintage elements in architectural projects. “When I restored my own historic Spanish Revival residence in Santa Barbara, I spent countless hours at Liz’s, sourcing door and cabinet hardware that looks original to the house. If you ever have an opportunity to ring my doorbell, that, too, comes from Liz’s.”

Wearstler echoes Stuart’s sentiments: “Any time I’m in need of iconic, truly unique hardware, millwork or lighting, I go to Liz’s. There is an incredible collection of great finds there.”

Where does Gordon unearth all this great hardware? Her shopping trips to France, Italy and Argentina help — she speaks furniture in four languages — and she visits old, established hardware stores to ask if they have boxes of stock that hasn’t sold and they would like to unload.

In 2000, Gordon shared her expertise in Decorative Hardware: Interior Designing with Knobs, Handles, Latches, Locks, Hinges, and Other Hardware (ReganBooks), which she describes as “a pretty picture book about hardware that breaks it down by period, like early American, Eastlake, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Spanish Revival.” Today, Gordon credits the steampunk revolution with bringing old-fashioned styles back. She’s seeing a resurgence of interest in Art Deco. Italian lighting, and not just Murano, is also hot right now.

For those wondering how she tells the difference between an authentic antique door knocker and a more recent knockoff, she has a ready answer: “There are telling signs as to whether something is originally Victorian versus something that was a reproduction made in the 1970s whose patina has now aged,” she explains, adding, “I always want to keep a level of purity on the racks in the main part of the store.”

You wouldn’t expect anything less from a woman with such a singular vision. “People say to me, ‘Don’t sweat the little stuff,’ ” Gordon concludes. “But that’s all I ever do.”

 

Visit Liz’s Antique Hardware on 1stdibs

 


TALKING POINTS

Liz Gordon shares her thoughts on a few choice pieces.

Mid-century light fixture, 1960
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Mid-century light fixture, 1960

“I have two of these pieces. I got them in a warehouse in Chicago, but they were originally out of the Florsheim Shoe Company. They needed serious restoration, and my guys did a great job. They’re walnut and brass, and they are just beautiful.”

Murano smoked-glass pendant, 2000
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Murano smoked-glass pendant, 2000

“This fixture actually isn’t that old. It was probably made around the turn of the millennium. I bought eight of them. They were specially created for Heidi Klum’s house, and I found them in an architectural warehouse. There are no other ones made with that finish and that glass.”

Set of oversized Schlage doorknobs, 1950s
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Set of oversized Schlage doorknobs, 1950s

“These, which almost have an Aztec feel, go on mid-century doors, usually in the center of a 36-inch door. We’re in Los Angeles, so people are very interested in mid-century.”

Pair of Victorian hinges, 1869
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Pair of Victorian hinges, 1869

“These are beautiful. They’re from the late 1860s. Are they strong? Yeah, they hold up.”

Brutalist-inspired copper fountain, 1950s
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Brutalist-inspired copper fountain, 1950s

“I think this piece is so cool — the Brutalist style is raw. I just love it.”

Pair of fish door handles, 1950s
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Pair of fish door handles, 1950s

“This is one of my most interesting pieces. Gorgeous. They’re door handles made out of blue lapis.”

Venini chandelier, 1960
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Venini chandelier, 1960

“This is huge. As soon as you walk into the store you see it. I bought this from a dealer in Italy, and just getting it here all in one piece was pretty miraculous, if you ask me.”

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