One of the first surprises when we bought our 140+ year old house 15 years ago was that the stiff, green carpet that covered the stairs was hiding a dilapidated staircase beneath it. The ancient treads sagged like rubber playground swing seats, and were covered over with pieces of brittle plywood. I ripped up the carpet, and rebuilt the stairs but the new standard treads are thinner and narrower than the old planks so I had to do some additional trim work. Somehow this turned into a little art project: there are twelve stairs so I bought wooden letters that read,
U
P
D
O
W
N
U
P
D
O
W
N
It was a playful and subtle word game; when I first put the letters in place, they were white on white.
Over the years, however, the words were overlooked. A W fell off and disappeared. A U lost one of its sides. So last night I painted the backdrop blue, cleaned up the letters and 3D printed replacements for the missing W and the broken U, which are visible in the picture of the staircase. The new 3D print of the U is also detailed in the bottom image. I used Constantia Bold font at 40mm tall and extruded 15mm.
The initial idea was from the perspective of the stairs; what it knows of humans, always passing by in a hurry - up, down, up, down. I am sure it also had to do with the title of the book/movie/play Up The Down Staircase. The book, by Bel Kaufman, was published in 1965 and was on The New York Times Best Seller list for 64 weeks. It is a story about an idealistic English language teacher at an over-crowded, inner-city high school in New York.
Click here to 3D print a full set of these letters from my related Thingiverse post.