“It’s evolving, like I am.” That is how Ali Mahon, owner of The Barns by Ali Mahon in Riverside, describes her nearly 30 years in the antiques business. Her career has progressed and shifted along with several life phases, starting when she left a demanding job in finance in 1998 to raise her four small children. Mahon and her husband were furnishing their first home, and she found herself continuously drawn to early American painted furniture and folk art—a passion of her mother’s she had not previously realized she shared. During this time, Nancy Fishelson, the Los Angeles designer-turned-Connecticut antiques dealer, took Mahon under her wing, and the duo began selling at shows together. “And that’s when I got the bug,” Mahon remembers.
Then she and her family moved to Florida for eight years, and her love of early Americana didn’t quite fit with the area’s penchant for Old World tropical glamour. Her time there, however, allowed her to work with interior designer and antiques dealer Lars Bolander, who taught her everything about Swedish design.
Antiques dealer Ali Mahon poses in her family room under a 19th-century trade sign made from the side of a Vermont mail-delivery wagon.
Alfie is ready with a greeting at the big barn, which originally served as a hayloft on the property’s chestnut tree farm and is now part of Mahon’s curated gallery and showroom.
By 2020, life had dealt more than a few curveballs. Mahon had lost both her parents and her husband during their years in Florida, and returning to the family’s 1804 Connecticut home offered, if not a blank slate, a chance to reimagine their past traditions. “I thought, ‘I can make this house more my own than ever,’” she recalls. With her youngest child heading to college, Mahon put away the game tables and renovated the property—which included three barns—connecting the largest one to the home and turning it into a family room, while transforming the others into showrooms.
“People come to my front door, and I love giving them a sense right away about how things work in situ,” she explains. This clever setup also offers spaces to host trunk shows and create a unique, immersive shopping experience by appointment. Mahon’s unconventional approach lets clients browse like they would at a typical antique store or preview a curated collection requested by homeowners or interior designers sourcing for their clients. And there’s a good chance she’ll sell you something right off her fireplace mantel if you ask.
“I have never bought anything that I wouldn’t live with,” she notes. The same goes for her holiday décor. In the barn-turned-family-room, a sweeping 14-foot tree (as tall as 18 feet, some years) is decorated with her collection of ornaments, each one found or stitched by hand. Simple garlands and dried flowers, like Queen Anne’s lace, are paired with antiques that feel festive even if they are not specifically “Christmas,” an aesthetic that she prefers. Consider, for example, the circa-1800s red toy Swedish horse that rotates among Mahon’s showrooms and takes center stage at the holidays or the clay buffalo made in 1700s Thailand, which serves as a centerpiece representing abundance and fertile crops.
“I think collections, just by nature, carry the traditions that the holidays are about,” Mahon says. While some items return annually—the tree’s position in front of the large barn window and the box of needlepoint ornaments—she varies the type of tree and the assortment of antiques on display from year to year. “It’s about having fun with decorating,” she says. “I think that’s the best part about the holidays; there are a few weeks out of the year that you can do whatever you want.”
Alfie warms himself by the fire on an Elizabeth Eakins custom rug tucked under vintage chairs sourced in 1980s Los Angeles. A large 19th-century architectural fan from the estate of William Hodgins is mounted above the fireplace.
In the dining room, places are set with vintage bamboo flatware, handblown wine glasses that were a wedding gift to Mahon’s parents in 1965, and Themis Z fine porcelain plates made in Greece. Antique rattan chairs from Spain surround an old farm table—from Monique Shay Antiques—and the oil painting is by artist Edwidge Fouvry.
For Mahon, the festivities start at Thanksgiving, and her door is open November through the New Year, beginning with a family Thanksgiving dinner at her house and continuing with casual cocktails or coffee with friends throughout the sea-son. It all culminates at her annual “Christmas Eve Eve” party—which over the years has ranged from an intimate gathering to a larger soirée. “I’m never formal—so it’s not too dressy—but it’s nice and elevated,” she says.
Then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are spent at home with family before returning to normal routines in January. “The years go by so fast,” she says. “And I love bringing everybody together.”
