Coffee Table Book of: Christmas Trees (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Christmas Trees is a large-format coffee table book about the Christmas tree, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. It follows the tree from the forest and the farm to candlelit and Victorian rooms, the great public trees and the south.

It opens with the trees where they grow: tall Norway spruces by a flowering alpine meadow, a Fraser fir on a rocky ridge above drifting cloud, balsam firs and golden birches by a still northern lake, and Scots pines on a purple heather moor.

Then the tree farm: rows of young firs over a snowy hillside and green summer hills, and an old red barn with cut firs against its boards.

Then early trees: a small fir hung only with red apples in a whitewashed hall, and a treetop hung upside down from a ceiling beam. Then by candlelight: a tall spruce lit with small white candles beside a green tiled stove, a single candle in a brass clip at the tip of a branch, and a candlelit fir with a bucket of water beside it.

Then Victorian rooms: a tall fir in a drawing room with deep green walls and a white marble fireplace, and a tree in a deep bay window with snow falling past the panes. Then straw and paper: straw stars and straw goats tied with red ribbon, strings of small red flags with white crosses, and paper chains.

Then trees made of other things: a feather tree tipped with small red berries, a cone of curling pale wood shavings, a silver aluminium tree washed in coloured light, and little bottle-brush trees in soft green, white and pink. Then glass and white: silver baubles with long glass icicles, and a flocked fir hung with pale blue glass.

Then the great public trees: a towering fir on a harbour quay and another under the glass dome of a palm house. Then snow and night: young firs under a full moon. Then the trees of the south: a pohutukawa covered in crimson flowers above a summer beach, and a gnarled tree ablaze with orange-yellow flowers.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the tree itself, its kinds, its growing and its customs, rather than about the pictures: how a crop of Christmas trees is replanted in rotation, which Christians put lighted candles on their trees, which Australian tree has long been called the Christmas tree, and the day the Swedes take their tree down.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.