Christmas Tree of Books 2011

It’s becoming somewhat of a tradition at Juniper Books – every year we build a Christmas tree constructed out of  books, but we change how it is made each year as the possibilities are truly endless.   Last year we made a 7 foot tall tree made up of about 800 green books stacked layer upon layer.  This year we made a more subtle creation – a tree made up entirely of olive green law books, some of which we carved form the tree’s branches.

Before anyone gets upset about cutting books we should explain a couple things – first of all we re-purposed about 10,000 law books this year this year that law firms and law libraries no longer needed as their content has all been digitized.  Thousands of these very nice substantial matching books went to retailers and designers for decoration and visual merchandising, and hundreds more we have used many for Juniper Books’ custom  jacket creations such as our Elephant Six-Pack.  So, cutting, chopping, carving or drilling through a few books that we know are plentiful and may face worse fates if we don’t do something creative with them makes perfect sense to us!  We won’t be dismembering a first edition of Pride and Prejudice anytime soon, don’t worry.

The tree is about 8 feet tall on 7 shelves, plus the star.  Christmas ornaments dangle from the page edges – we shaped them to hold the ornaments – a very organic and 100% natural approach.  Christmas lights are wrapped around the tree so it glows beautifully.

The tree was the centerpiece of our holiday party this past weekend where we invited numerous friends, customers, suppliers, designers and others to celebrate the holiday season and browse our warehouse for various book gifts to buy for their friends and family. Thanks to everyone who attended and complimented us on the tree.  There were a number of lawyers in attendance (my wife is a law professor) and they all got a kick out of the creative use of law books.

Technical questions: 30 books were used in the creation of the tree, of which 24 had to be cut in some way to create the tree.  While we originally considered gluing the parts together or constructing supports to hold the books up, we did not end up doing so as the law books are substantial enough to support themselves, even after being cut.

Happy holidays to you and yours, I wish you the best for the holiday season and a happy healthy 2012!

Thatcher

thatcher@juniperbooks.com