I Met The Twee Bird That Ruffled Kelly Clarkson’s Feathers

Before we get to the feud, let’s start with the facts. Molly, the wooden crank-operated automaton made by the artist Bliss Kolb, is a beauty. Although Molly is made of basswood, cherry, and teak, with glass eyes and steel screws, its buttery yellow body and dusky brown wings recall the northern yellow warbler, a melodic whistling songbird found across the U.S. and Canada. Molly is a beautiful singer.

It is also true that Kelly Clarkson is a beautiful singer. Or maybe beautiful is understating it. Clarkson is considered one of the great vocalists of her generation and one of the greatest singers of all time. She instantly proved the premise of American Idol: that a reality show could, in fact, find the best singer in the nation (and arguably could have ended once they found her). For seven seasons, Clarkson belted out unbelievable covers during the “Kellyoke” segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show. Her performance of her most-requested song ever—”Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters, in the original, staggering key—features YouTube comments that are the dictionary definition of diva worship, for good reason.

It seems a shame that two such spectacular singers would be caught up in a feud. Clarkson’s beef is not with the bird, per se, but the shop that displays Molly. Here is what happened. On Oct. 10, Clarkson tweeted that she “drove all the way to Brooklyn”—from Manhattan?—to check out Art of Play, a high-end curiosity shop on Atlantic Avenue, because the store “looked really rad.” Here is Clarkson’s telling:

This story is certainly disheartening. No shop, not even one peddling high-end curiosities, gets to treat America’s sweetheart like this. But on Oct. 11, Art of Play fired back on Instagram with its own version of events. The store alleged that Clarkson had asked about buying Molly, an automaton the store described as “one-of-a-kind” and “who plays an important role in the magic shows we host here.” Molly, Art of Play clarified, is permanently attached to the wall and not for sale. The response seemed innocuous until the final slide of the post, in which Art of Play quotes a Clarkson song in a winking jab: “As a talented popular singer once said ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.'”

Undeterred, Clarkson clapped back, calling the store a liar. She alleged that the bird was in fact for sale, but she had instead been offered something “comparable.” Clarkson’s tweet also included a photo that showed a price tag for “Singing Bird Automaton by Bliss Kolb, $15,000.” Kelly vindicated???

Once Clarkson doubled down, so did Art of Play, which released a second, arguably pissier Instagram statement alleging that Clarkson had spent “5 minutes” in the store and that the employee had shared that Molly’s creator, Bliss Kolb, would be willing to part with an identical automaton for $15,000. The employee, Art of Play continued, also offered to show Clarkson a different singing bird automaton made in Germany that costs $2,000. All this raises some important questions, not including those about the international market for clockwork wooden birds and whether an automaton that has an identical twin is truly one-of-a-kind. Perhaps the most important one is this: Was Molly for sale or not?

To investigate, I trekked to the room where it happened, meaning the Art of Play storefront a block away from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The store was bustling; clearly Clarkson’s tweets had sparked public curiosity in the shop’s many curiosities. Two people stood outside the storefront and fussed over an enormous video camera. The spirit of Kelly Clarkson buzzed in all of us, even if we did not speak her name. As soon as I entered, I received an almost alarming amount of customer service from three separate store employees, who told me I could pick up anything I wanted and play with it. I picked up many things, including a $85 wooden caterpillar named Juba and a $40 jigsaw puzzle made out of a quarter. I even saw the German singing bird automaton the employee allegedly offered as a comparable item, which, while nice, was no Molly.

I was not the only patron who had come to see Molly. After three separate groups had taken a selfie with the automaton, I finally got a look at the bird.

Molly was beautiful but Molly’s talents were obscured by the bird’s stillness, the hand crank covered with a DO NOT TOUCH sign. And there, right by Molly, was a price tag, but not necessarily the same one that Clarkson saw. In Clarkson’s tweet, she reposted an image taken that showed a wall label reading “Singing Bird Automata by Bliss Kolb” with a price of $15,000. According to the label I saw in the store today, Molly’s price has gone way up. Inflation!

Since the whole fiasco started, Art of Play has pinned an Instagram post from September with a photo of Molly under the text “Our favorite items not for sale.” But this post is not, as this text might suggest, a list of items that are literally not for sale, but rather a list of experiences considered priceless, such as “solving a puzzle” or “discovering the unexpected.”

As I pondered Molly, I realized that the store owner, Adam Rubin, was now doing an interview about the store’s encounter with Clarkson—so that explained the video camera—and I was probably in the shot. They were filming this interview in the middle of the small store, and so I had to stay in place and listen lest I walk directly in front of the camera. Although Rubin declined to share any details of Clarkson’s visit, he said he wanted to clarify a few things, which I will recap to the best of my ability here. First, he said the employee who met Clarkson did not even know she was disgruntled by the interaction. Second, he said in the store’s entire history, only one person has had a bad experience here, the reasons of which became muffled because an excited child began playing with a loud wooden contraption. The people interviewing Rubin asked if Clarkson’s tweets were, in fact, a blessing in disguise. Just look at all the people in the store, they said. Right on cue, a storegoer named Ben interrupted the interview. He told Rubin he’d gone way out of his way to support Art of Play, and that he thought its wares were great. “And that response? What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger? Chef’s kiss!” Ben said, smiling into the camera.

Ben’s arrival allowed me to escape to the front of the store, where I was helped again by another helpful employee who told me how to operate the kaleidoscope I held. As I held my eye up to the tube and turned the brass ring, the rainbow in my eyes began morphing. There were too many colors and shapes to keep track of; as soon as I concentrated on one squiggle or crystal, something else reformed in my periphery. I understood the pattern was too intricate and the perspectives too multitudinous, for me to comprehend on my own. A kaleidoscope makes these illusions by tilting two or more mirrors at each other; what you see are not real designs but reflections.

What really happened in Art of Play on Oct. 10? Only Molly knows the truth, as both Clarkson and Art of Play seem unwilling to budge from their individual experiences. Rubin, the store owner, told USA Today that Clarkson’s tweets amount to “asymmetrical social warfare.” Is this hyperbole? Of course, but the Art of Play Instagram, which has been posting a lot since the weekend, is still being assailed by Clarkson fans. Was tweeting about a somewhat pretentious home-goods store in Brooklyn the best use of Clarkson’s time, and was she even thinking about the power her millions of fans could have over a small store? Probably not. At the same time, I wager Art of Play has never been so bustling on a random Tuesday morning. This is the power of Kelly Clarkson, how even her wrath is accompanied by a certain shine.

What does Bliss Kolb think of all of this? The artist behind Molly has made no comment on the matter. He is probably somewhere in Seattle, blissfully offline, making beautiful custom cabinets and other wooden crank-operated automata, none of which appear to be necessarily one-of-a-kind. Kolb appears to currently be toiling away on a mechanical duck modeled after one created in the 18th century by French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson. The duck has a swiveling neck and wings that open and close. If I were Kelly Clarkson, I would buy this bird instead.