How did Juniper Books get started?
In the beginning, Juniper Books was just a hobby selling rare books & first editions from my living room in Los Angeles. I moved to Boulder, Colorado a few months later and one thing led to another and I started curating book collections for clients around the world (while still selling rare books). A few years later, I invented custom book jackets and started coming up with ideas for book sets that eventually became the focus of what we offer today.
How did you come up with the name?
Juniper trees live for 500-1000 years. I wanted to both respect the history of printed books having been around for 500 plus years, and contribute to their potential to be around for 500 more. During the first decade we were in business, ebooks were rapidly ascendant and there was a lot of talk about printed books going away completely, so I felt some urgency to reinvent books and give people more reasons to buy them and keep them forever.
Where do your find inspiration for your book sets and how do you come up with the designs?
One of our fundamental design concepts is to turn books inside out, so that the emotion and power contained within the books is represented on the outside. We know we have succeeded when you can walk into a room and you get a feeling from looking at the shelves. We go through a number of design ideas in order to arrive at our final designs. Once an overall concept is approved, our graphic design team lays out each book jacket to fit an individual book very precisely, this is important as most of our jackets make up a design across multiple books.
Do you have any personal favorite custom book jackets and/or sets that you've created over the years?
I love all books and reading in general, so it's hard to pick favorites! But the books that have had the biggest impact on me personally also tend to be among my favorite Juniper Books designs. These include Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, and Harry Potter. Our custom projects are always a lot of fun for me, some favorites include the NoMad Hotel, RH England, and libraries I have curated for various yachts, some with hundreds of books!
How has the company changed since its inception, and what elements of it have stayed the same?
We are constantly reinventing what we do and how we do it. However, the "why" has stayed the same - it's all about a love of books and reading, and sharing that with the world. These days we're very focused on pop culture book series and giving super fans more of what they love - both limited editions and special editions of the books that have been there for them through all the ups and downs. We want our customers to smile when they look at their bookshelves!
How does your Monotasking work relate to Juniper Books?
My second book, The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better includes a chapter about reading that grew out of my thinking about why books and reading are good for the world. We live in a super distracting world and reading is one of the activities (or "monotasks") we can do to reclaim our attention and rebuild our focus, which we can then apply to every aspect of our lives.
What is Juniper Custom?
Juniper Custom is all about customizing book collections and libraries, whether it be for a really special one-of-a-kind gift, or for the dream library you’ve always wanted.
Juniper Custom works with homeowners, interior designers, hospitality properties and others to curate and design book collections that truly fit their interests and style.
Looking for more? Find quotes from For the Love of Books: Designing and Curating a Home Library by Thatcher Wine.