Customer Reviews

Aesop's Mirror: A Love Story

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This book gives a wonderful and witty you-are-there look at the worlds of art, antiques and restoration, the auction business, and New England history. It's written with a breeziness that makes it fun to read and an honesty that can take you by surprise. More deeply, the author describes her voyage of philosophical discovery, tracing the trajectory of her obsession with an object to uncover what ultimately determines any object's "value". A great read - interesting, funny, informative, and iconoclastic.

Let's face it, there haven't been many non-information driven books written about antiques and the people whose lives they touch. 'Aesop's Mirror' is worth having for those of us who regularly struggle with issues of provenance, authenticity and artistic attribution. It's a vicarious thrill that makes the telling of her manically thorough research project worthwhile.

The author - a restoration specialist and gilder - buys a very large (8.5 feet high) 19th century mirror at a Rhode Island auction in 1995. Based on preliminary research, she surmises it may have come from the estate of a well known Providence family, and the bulk of the story relates her extensive research of family records and interviews with descendants, hoping to find a link. 45 pages of historical fiction about the family in the 1870s is well written, and adds background to keep the book moving along.

A juicy little side story is the lambasting of Leigh Keno, as one of "a tight cabal of authorities who control the market". He is portrayed as a "ferociously ambitious" opportunist who buys a gem of a Classical dolphin sofa from Huggins for $50,000 (including her time and expenses to restore it) which he re-sells for more than three times that amount to the Detroit Institute of Art. This is almost ten times what she paid for it at a country auction, and no one else was biting at the time, but still she chafes at his fabulous profit. Her blunt candor about the experience would be a bridge-burning episode for most of us

The "love story" subtitle is a bit of hyperbole, although Huggins does wax poetic about how the carved figures on the mirror speak to her. Maybe I'm cynical but I'm unconvinced that she would have kept the mirror if she could have positively connected it to the Rhode Island family. But what the heck, it's a great read.

I've bought too many books that, by page 30, were predictable examples of their category. Not so Aesop's Mirror. It jumps categories, pirouettes around expectations, and speaks in a voice at once knowing, witty, and snappy---a pinch of Dorothy Parker, a touch of the historian, a whiff of romance, politics, mystery, and suspense---and for me, a surprise finale! The book is at once profound and playful. It addresses Time itself. It describes in concrete terms what gives life, not only to objects but to oneself. I'll tell you no more. Whatever else you do don't miss this book. It is that very rare treasure: a one of a kind FIND!

Maryalice Huggins, a masterful story teller, has produced one of the most compelling books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down, yet (shades of Harry Potter) never wanted the magical experience to end. I enthusiastically recommend it to everyone who loves a suspense-filled story and/or has a passion for history, antiques, the decorative arts and material culture in general, plus genealogy. Don't miss it!

Once again the veil has been lifted and the public can peek behind the curtain of the antiques world to view its inner workings in the new book Mary Alice Huggins Aesop's Mirror. From a barn in rural Rhode Island to The Winter Antiques Show, Huggins tells the tale of a large mirror and an Empire sofa as they work their way up the antiques food chain. As a New York City antique restorer with a heavy hitter client list, the story goes deeper. This very personal story that will be a must read for personal property appraisers. It will validate both the highs and lows of our investigations.
In many ways, the book is the ultimate fantasy appraisal, the one we all would like to do if not bounded by time, money and energy. Due diligence directs us to consult experts when evaluating an object and the marketplace. Huggins, an insider, is able to show the mirror, unsure if is it American or English, to a staggering array of big names in the antiques field; John Hays, Luke Beckerdike, The Kenos, Alan Miller, Albert Sack, Carpenter etc. Equally staggering is the wide variety of opinions and values gathered, many of which were spongy "maybes" and "perhaps" . No one gets by unscathed. This alone is worth the price of the book. She further reveals the little know "blessers" who carry enormous power over the object's worthiness in the marketplace. These Blessers are often exalted restorers, not scholars who have learned how to wield their power and command fees for the combined result of both gut instinct and experience. As such, they are much aligned, especially by antique dealers who can watch their deals sour at their altars. New collectors and the uninitiated revere their every word and marvel at their staged quirkiness. The truly frightening part is that these many opinions are not written down or attached to the back of the object, so as appraisers when evaluating an object are faced with this shadow history. What if one of the blessers' has ruled that your appraisal piece is less than it purports and the invisible opinion affects the value, unbeknownst to the appraiser? As we know it happens all the time.
Huggins hooks her audience with discovering the objects in a Rhode Island estate and purchasing it later at a Gustave White auction. In describing the svengali charm of auctioneer Mike Corcoran, she nails him. In capturing his circus ringleader mastery, I was fearful in sharing our beloved local talent with a larger audience. She also captures the rough neck male dealers, as base gamblers, addicted to the "action" of the trade more than honoring the object or building great collections. In the end, it is the auctioneer, Mike Corcoran, with his charm and integrity maintained by hovering just slightly outside of the trade that is the true hero of the book.
Besides laying out the hierarchical ladder of the antiques trade, the author spotlights the many polarized camps. Territorial conflicts are entrenched greater than the Republicans and Democrats; Restorers versus conservators; scholars versus dealers, auctioneers versus appraisers and then any combination therein. She takes on sacred topics which are rarely challenged such as the need for conservators to X-ray furniture when their construction is well known. With a level hand across the entire antiques trade, Huggins bravely shows us that the emperor has no clothes.
Huggins continues the fantasy appraisal continues when she dives undaunted head first into years of primary document research into the famous Brown family of Providence, looking to establish the mirror's provenance. Already warned that the archives had already thoroughly picked over, she produces undiscovered vignettes of family members with their own archives. What appraiser wouldn't like the thrill of document research and family interviews trying to establish ownership and craftsman source? But in the real world appraisers are not compensated nor get to work for such a well prominent, well documented family. While this section of the book provides the narrative and characters to rival the Bronte sisters, it is perhaps the weakest part. Extrapolated from the material is historical novelization that will make the book enjoyable for the public, but will chafe most scholars. Spoiler alert; In the end, her years of toiling yield only suggestions and possibilities and not a solid provenance.
Huggins covers fresh ground in describing the antiques trade through the vantage of the restorer. Never before has the mysterious high end workshop been fully depicted. As a restorer myself, this was rich and insightful. She is brutally honest in dispelling the romanticised idea that the public has about the alchemy and recreation of a restoration workshop. Instead Huggins shows restoration as the manic endeavor it can be. One gray area of the book is the exact extent of the restoration which she did to the mirror and how this may have affected the mirror's journey through the marketplace.
This will be a delightful journey for appraisers from the usual conventional formatted exhibition catalogs and scholarly research tomes. Unlike Lucien Freund's Object of Desire, now nearly 20 years old, this object road trip is written by an insider rather than someone outside the trade. The moral of this story may be that even those inside the profession, with many high level connections still can't get a straight answer nor an easy sale. When our (Mary) Alice falls through the looking glass, she buys it, restores it and then tries to sell it, and is right at home with the white rabbit and mad hatter and Queen of Hearts found in the Antiques world.
Jennifer Lacker

This is not only a very well written book which makes it an easy read but it has the combination of a mystery and a back scene look at the way antiques are bought/sold/marketed. I was amazed how wooden the antiques heirarchy is when confronted with something that they may not know about. It was also an eyeopener for me on how the experts create provenance [and the big bucks that goes along with it]as well as the sneek peek at how one of the Keno boys can be agressive and rude - so unlike their public personna. Overall, a very very enjoyable book.

I loved this book and loved learning how much is involved in the restoration of antiques. Maryalice has captured the intensity involved when you love what you do. Her perseverence is remarkable and I love the way she incorporated her family into her quest.

If you are interested in antiques, art, research, scholarship, etc. you will love this book. I loved the history of the families and the memorable exchanges between the author and the other scholars (tsk tsk Leigh Keno).
It was a page turner for me!

For all those in love with beautiful things, this book delves into the Auction world
where a small group of mostly men vie to label and authenticate the things we treasure.
But love conquers all and her passion comes home to roost

"Aesop's Mirror immediately caught my eye on the new books rack at the library and from the moment I glanced at the gloss on the jacket I knew this was going to be a good one. For one thing it is about a field I find fascinating, the lore and mystique of old objects. Then I saw that the author is an antiques restorer and a gilder, a highly skilled craft I know a little about and truly admire. She would know what she was talking about. Right away I saw a similarity to Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting, about the search for a well documented but missing old master painting, except that in this case the mirror was found and it was the date, place of origin, and maker that were missing. The thread of this book involves a curious object that appears at an obscure auction, an anomalously huge mirror, with a fox-and-grapes theme derived from Aesop's fable, the one from which we get the saying, "sour grapes".

Ms. Huggins tells a good tale. Here is a type of real life detective story that reads in the way a novel can, with well defined and colorful characters who are real people, descriptions of places she's lived and others she could convincingly visualize from letters and journals of long ago.

She leads us into realms that few have access to, such as the rarified world of ultra high-end American antiques and the men and women who study and sell them, and the sympathetically portrayed personal worlds of those who had lived with them. Throughout, the book has a special quality that I'd call "heart".

Maryalice's quest for the true source of the mirror would challenge experts, and go so far as to reveal how flimsy the foundations of received opinion can be. She was doggedly determined to get to the truth, refusing to give up when discouragements were insubstantial, but willing to readjust her intuitions according to facts as they appeared. These are qualities I find admirable in themselves.

It was a book I savored, reading word for word, and liked it so much that I got my own copy here. I won't spoil it for the reader to tell if the fox got the grapes or not."