The Staircase Tree

About this work

The trunk fills the centre of the picture, dark and twisting, and a glowing golden staircase wraps around it like a ribbon. The eye usually starts at the lower left, where a small lit lantern doorway is set into the trunk, then climbs the steps turn by turn to the crown. Along the way it finds five small wooden houses with lit windows: two at the upper left, two at the upper right and right, and one at the middle right. Golden autumn leaves cling to the branches and drift down through a misty grey-blue sky, warmed by a glow on the left. Charcoal brown and grey-blue keep the gold and amber lights bright. Close up, the twisting trunk and each tiny window are rich with detail. From across the room it reads as one golden spiral up a tree. The mood is a cosy fairytale.

Plants are among the clearest places to meet Fibonacci numbers. Many grow new leaves, seeds or scales at an angle of about 137.5 degrees from the last, the so-called golden angle, which packs them efficiently and produces visible spirals. Count the spirals on a pine cone and you often find 8 and 13; on a large sunflower head, 34 and 55 are common. Ratios of such neighbouring numbers approach 1.618, the golden ratio. This tree makes the idea literal with a stair that winds up its trunk. Treetop houses and a staircase of light belong to the dream logic that surrealism explored from the 1920s, where the ordinary is quietly rearranged.

It is made for a child's bedroom or a family reading corner, and brings warmth to a living room on autumn evenings. Grey-blue, sage, mushroom, cream and warm white walls all flatter it. A natural wood frame suits the trunk and the little houses, and a cream mat softens the dark edges. Warm lamplight makes the windows and leaves glow; soft daylight shows the misty sky. Above a bed or bookcase, 50 × 75 cm works well. For company, choose The Cloud Staircase, another climb into the sky, or The Nautilus Balloon, which shares its gentle, storybook feel. The file prints sharply to roughly 91 cm on the long edge at 300 dpi.