The book-of-the-week for week 44 is titled Ode to Stairs. It is an additional book to the House series. Ode to Stairs completes the Garden Shed and The Tree House book set...maybe.
The front cover of the book has a cut-out silhouette of a staircase over pastepaper and sepia toned sun-printed kozo. It was planned to resemble the real stairs leading to the tree house and garden shed in my own backyard.
The soft spine cased-in book opens to a single folio which is letterpress printed with the title, Ode to Stairs. The folio has been affixed to the case so it's centerfold is at the base of the book rather than along the spine.
That way, when the page is pulled down, the stairs rise up as if they are leading up to the tree house. The stairs are a type of box pop-up known as origamic architecture. Read about architectural origami at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origamic_architecture.
The poem was letterpress printed along the side of the pop-up. Hand-marbled paper was used for the background and a grey-tinted white ink used for the letterpress printing. The font is 12-point Caslon.
Climbing up stairs takes some effort, but once at the top, there is always a feeling of having accomplished something. Is there the same feeling when descending?
