We always enjoy it at Taro’s when clients value our work, and nothing says that more than people who choose to work with us more than once.  This year for the holiday season Grand Seiko honored us with just such a project.  After working with them a few years ago to create their lion in origami we were tasked this year with a much larger project: to decorate their brand new pop-up store in the Soho area of Manhattan.  The entire project took over a month, and was in three different parts.  The first part was to create origami ornaments for their tree, the second was to make a tree topper based on their headquarters in Japan, and then the third was to design and build a small forest of trees for their window display.

Part One: The Origami Tree

It is a question we all try to answer each holiday season: how are we going to decorate?  Well for Grand Seiko, they wanted something that would look polished and new, but still had roots in the history of the company.  In the prefect combination of the unique and accessible, they asked Taro’s Origami Studio senior artists to create and fold some cultural items both as decorations and then also as keepsakes for guests.  This way each guest to the store can both admire the artwork and then also take a piece of it home with them.  The models varied from the traditional, like snowflakes, flowers, and cranes, to the unique, like Godzillas, Mount Fujis and escape wheels.

The 8 models chosen where a snowflake, escape wheel (a unique part of their watches), bell flower, samurai helmet, lion, Mount Fuji, crane and crown.

Taro’s staff spent weeks perfecting the models and a few more weeks folding them.  In the end the total time was over 45 hours of folding to create these handmade ornaments.  They were then delivered to the new store and used to decorate and create this one-of-a-kind holiday tree.

Part Two: The Tree Topper

Grand Seiko has a very unique and recognizable building.  In fact, in the 1954 classic Godzilla, the titular monster actually destroys the building.  So it made sense to try and re-create it as a tree topper, but the building itself had some challenges.

The Grand Seiko “Wako” building in the Ginza district of Tokyo.

For starters, the entire façade of the front of the building is curved.  On top of that there are numerous windows and cutouts to account for.  So in order to tackle the project, Senior Artist and Designer Frank Ling recreated the building as a wireframe and then “printed” the pieces on a paper cutter to bring the whole thing to life.  Below you can see the final version and how detailed the re-creation is.  It really did provide the perfect way to add something extra to their Grand Seiko themed tree.

You can even see the fun the staff at Grand Seiko had mimicking this moment of monumental movie magic.

Part Three: The Window Display

A window display serves many functions; it is not only the best way to draw in new guests to your store, it is also a way to show the world a lot about your company.  In the case of Grand Seiko, they wanted to show off not only their world-class timepieces, but also their connection to the handmade.  Several different kinds of origami and paper trees were discussed.

But in the end, in order to achieve a nice verticality and the stability needed to last in the space, the Taro’s team had to create a brand new one from scratch.  The new models were also made out of custom paper to match the Pantones of the company as well as having to work around the steps in the front display.  To achieve this, the back row of the trees where actually split in half so that they could stand without taking up too much space.  Also, all of the trees were altered in order to make each one unique and different from the others.

After another 30 or so hours of folding and assembly the trees were ready in time for the holiday rush, so off they went, and were hand delivered to the Soho store for arraigning. The goal was to create the scene without distracting from the products themselves, and this paper forest ended up being the perfect holiday setting for Grand Seiko.