The Paper Folder

Most of us probably have at least some experience with origami at some point in our lifetime.  It can be pretty satisfying seeing a small colorful square of paper become an animal or shape that was not previously there just from a few folds.  The Paper Folder is a site dedicated to just about anything related to origami – I will start with the history and how it has developed to where it is and then probably dive more deeply into the different techniques and some more specific things that can be created.

To start off I’d like to jump into a little bit about the history of origami and where it began.  Surprisingly enough, it does not date back as far as one would think.  There is a lot of speculation about where origami actually originated, but there are records of it dating back to the 15^th century in Europe and references to a more specific form in the 17^th century in Japan.  One of which was a short poem written in the 1600s that references paper butterflies in a dream, which are used in Shinto weddings.

It was actually fairly recently, in the early 1900s, that origami took on a resurgence of popularity and underwent some interesting creations and innovations.  People like Akira Yoshizawa, who actually lived until 2005, was considered one of the grandmasters of the art and helped progress it in many ways, including the introduction of wet folding (which I will probably go into more detail about in later posts).  By his estimates he created more than 50,000 models – a true paper folder machine.  Even more recently, in the 1980s, the mathematical properties of origami were analyzed to create incredibly complex models like insects.  If you haven’t seen any of these yet I would definitely recommend it – it is amazing to think that they came from a single sheet of paper.

I hope you enjoying reading more about origami and the paper folders that craft the amazing works of art.  I will do the best I can to discuss the most interesting topics and show great pictures.  Fortunately, Flickr has some pretty incredible origami images so this shouldn’t be a problem.  For now I will have to stick to the simple models I can make myself (my personal favorite is still the hopping frog), but along the way I hope to pick up some techniques myself and work on learning some new models.  Good luck to you in your own progression with this wonderful art form.

Photo Source: kekremsi