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.