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Collaboration with Liz Gordon of Liz's Antique Hardware in Los Angeles, CA

The Joy Kingston Foundation® in collaboration with Liz Gordon of Liz’s Antique Hardware in Los Angeles, CA is please to announce the availability of financial aid scholarships for college students. Students must be currently enrolled in an accredited lighting or hardware design college program. Additional scholarships shall also be available in other relevant lighting and hardware related career disciplines.

A Donation from the Alfred Parvin Foundation

Foundation Activities A Donation from the Alfred Parvin Foundation The Joy Kingston Foundation® gratefully acknowledges a generous donation of $10,000 received in 2014 from the Alfred Parvin Foundation in Los Angeles, CA. The Alfred Parvin Foundation believes deeply in supporting education, especially in the arts, and has a long history of providing scholarships to students. This donation will enable the JKF to provide scholarship money to several deserving students pursuing a future in the world of design. The JKF appreciates the generosity of the Alfred Parvin Foundation and will put the funds to good use supporting our designers of the future.

Kingston Skillman Dress Donation

The Joy Kingston Foundation® gratefully acknowledges Kate Nardin for her recent donation of a vintage Joy Kingston dress from her private collection of vintage clothing. The dress is a casual creation featuring Hope Skillman fabric, and Skillman’s name appears on the label along with Joy Kingston’s. This dress typifies Joy Kingston’s California inspired approach to woman’s sportswear and is a fine example of Joy Kingston’s artistry.

Dress designed by Joy Kingston, Fabric designed by Hope Skillman

New Donator to Joy Kingston Foundation : Liz Gordon

Liz Gordon

Liz Gordon never planned to specialize in antique hardware and lighting. As a very novice 21-year-old antiques dealer (she’d been in the business for a week), she was looking for merchandise in a dumpster in a Chicago alley and met a man who was doing the same thing. He said his name was Peter (it turns out it wasn’t, but that’s another story). He told her that he had a nearby warehouse full of stuff that she might be interested in buying.

Liz followed Peter to the industrial warehouse, climbing up four stories to his space. Peter opened the door and Liz met her career.

The 4000 square foot space was full of antiques, but what caught Liz’s eye were the barrels, drawers, and piles of hardware. Within a week she borrowed $6,000 from her grandmother to buy the warehouse from Peter. It turned out to be a good investment on her grandmother’s part—she was repaid within a year—and a great investment on Liz’s part.

More than thirty-five years after meeting Peter she owns the world’s largest retail showroom devoted to antique hardware and lighting.

Liz’s Antique Hardware has been a vital part of the Los Angeles design and historic preservation community for over two decades. It’s a store, but it’s also a research institution devoted to hardware and lighting. The inventory represents 200 years of industrial design, interior design, and architecture.

Building upon her interest in art and design, Liz opened the Loft at Liz’s in 2007. The Loft features both emerging and established artists and artisans, fostering an open dialogue between eclectic and diverse points of view, ideologies and experiences in all mediums.