David Mitchell - How to Fold Origami: Easy Techniques and Over 20 Great Projects

O rigami means folding paper. Its that simple and that complicated, too. Origami began small but has grown big. As recently as the 1970s it was quite possible for an enthusiast to know almost every design in the origami repertoire. Today, that is quite impossible, even in the many specialist fields that have developed within origami. There are just too many designs out there and more are created every day. They multiply, in fact, like origami rabbits.

This book, then, cannot be an exhaustive catalogue of origami designs and styles. What it can be is an introduction to the major ideas that underlie origami design and give a broad overview of the most important techniques that are used to realise those ideas in paper. In order to make clear connections between these ideas I have tried to link the projects together. You will find enough origami fish in this book to stock a small aquarium, as well as several birds, elephants, boats and bowls. It is easier to understand the difference between design techniques when they are used to create similar subjects. But you will also find more unusual subjects too, a partly-sunken ship, a landscape, sunshine and many beautiful geometric designs.

I have also tried to strike a balance between designs folded from single sheets and those that use several, or even many. Modular origami is my passion, but I have tried to restrain myself and give other techniques a fair chance, too.

The techniques section of this book tells you all you need to know about how to fold paper and how to read origami diagrams. The individual chapters will introduce you to lots of new ideas about design techniques, origami ethics, and creative ideas, but there is one over-arching idea that you need to know about right now, and that is the idea of elegance. Elegance is a quality that origami designs either have or lack. It isnt something you can understand by looking at the finished design, or by studying the diagrams. Nor is it something you can easily define. Elegance is a tactile quality. More of a feeling than anything else. You have to actually fold the design to understand it. Elegant design sequences flow. Inelegant ones seem to be contrived, or are difficult to fold. Maybe the layers get too thick, or you seem to have to force the paper into shape. Youll know elegance when you find it because the paper almost seems to fold itself. And you will very definitely find it in the designs in this book which have been chosen very much with elegance, rather than, say, efficiency, verisimilitude or cleverness, in mind.

It is not, perhaps, too much to say that it is elegance that sets origami apart from other papercrafts, indeed from other crafts in general. Origami is not so much about the destination as the journey. The result is important, but how you get there is more important still.

Paperfolding, in all its incredible variety, has fascinated me since I was a child. It is remarkable what can be created from ordinary paper, just by folding it - something that almost all of us can easily do. I hope that this book will not only help you to understand what origami is all about, but also to derive as much pleasure and satisfaction from folding paper as I do.

The Invention of Paper: Since folding paper is such a natural thing to do, it is likely that paperfolding, in its broadest sense, is almost as old as paper itself. According to Chinese tradition, paper was first invented by Tsai Lun, a senior court official working for the Chinese Emperor Yuan Hsing, in AD 105. Tsai Luns paper was made from fibres obtained from bark, rags and old fish nets and was intended to be used as a medium for writing on (though the Chinese also used other media, such as flattened bamboo strips, for this purpose). This kind of paper would probably not have folded at all well, and so very early paperfolding was probably only of the kind that can be called everyday origami, where paper is folded for purely practical purposes such as concealing the contents of a letter from open view.

The Japanese tradition: According to Japanese tradition, knowledge of how to make paper was first brought to Japan in AD 610 by the Buddhist monk Dokyo. The plant fibres available to papermakers in Japan soon enabled them to produce strong, crisp papers of exceptionally high quality. Paper of this kind folds well and over the next 1000 years a tradition of craft paperfolding slowly evolved.

At first, much of Japanese paperfolding was ceremonial in nature, largely concerned with the folding of wrappers, known as tsutsumi or noshi, which were used to contain and decorate gifts, especially gifts of flowers associated with religious festivals. Folk memories of this practice still survive in the design of some gift wrappings in Japan today.

During the same period, folded paper butterflies began to be used to decorate the sake (Japanese rice wine) containers used in wedding ceremonies and these butterflies may well have been the earliest examples of representational origami designs.

Gradually, the ceremonial type of paperfolding gave rise to a folk tradition of folding paper into simple representational and practical designs, such as the well-known Tsuru (see ), Yakkosan (or the man-servant) and the Masu. By 1728 sufficient folds were known to enable them to be collected into the Go-hyaku Oribako or Box of 500 Folds. Unfortunately the folds themselves have not survived so we have no idea which designs were included in the collection.

The Senzaburu Orikata: The year 1797 saw the publication in Japan of two books of origami designs which have survived. The most important of these is called The Senzaburu Orikata Folding 1000 Cranes, a book of origami designs, woodcuts and poetry. Senzaburu means 1000 cranes, Orikata is an old word for origami. The number 1000 in the title is used symbolically. If you folded all the designs in the book you would only have folded about 250 cranes in all.

It is not clear whether The Senzaburu Orikata is a collection of traditional designs or an explanation of the design work of one particular paperfolder. Perhaps it is both. One of the important techniques it introduces is the sub-dividing of large sheets into smaller sheets by means of slits. This type of paperfolding is sometimes called Rokoan style. The most complex design featured in The Senzaburu Orikata is the Hundred Cranes, though without any accompanying instruction.

The Kayaragusa: Another interesting collection of diagrams for origami designs, The Kayaragusa (also known as the Kan No Mado or Window on Midwinter), was compiled in 1845, though it was not published publicly until 1961. This compilation contains a much more varied collection of models, including a dragonfly, lobster, octopus, snail and various human figures, and is evidence of the existence of a vibrant paperfolding tradition in which a large variety of creative techniques were in use. Most of the arms and legs for the complex figures are obtained by cutting slits into the starting shape used, but the manuscript also contains instructions for important uncut designs such as the traditional Frog. Many of the designs in