Recently I have rediscovered Origami, ori meaning to fold and gami the paper, thanks to my daughter who goes to the daycare. My daughter is only three-years-old and obviously most children cannot fold at this age. But their progress is amazing, as in one year or two, most learns a few tricks and could make things on their own.
As the name suggests, origami is really about folding. Once the paper is folded, there are lines made on the paper which enables you to bend nicely. Particularly with classic Japanese paper, which is made out of bark not pulp, papers were rather coarse and had been strong. So even after making one piece, you can unfold and start all over again and make something new. Quite a few of the Origami artworks, such as sachet or box-shaped, are results of such exploratory minds in past, as they are more practical than being decorative.
A typical origami artwork does not involve any paper cutting during the process. To begin with there are only few basic folding methods:
- Fold inwards
- Fold outwards
- Fold and open (to make some marks or lines which help you to fold at certain angle later on)
- Place your finger inside the folds and open
Unless you are trying to create something very complicated, most pieces can be made by using these four tricks.
Things I photographed here are only few examples how simple folding could change a piece of paper into something so three dimensional. This one below is a watch, my daughter’s favorite. Whenever her teacher makes one like this for her, she has fun drawing arrows or numbers to make it a digital or an analog version.
If you use two papers and combine them into one, there’s the boy’s favorite, Ninja’s shuriken, a throwing knife.
And this one is for the ladies. The piece is called a lip color sachet, which was the purpose of the shape earlier. As you can see, there is a small pocket to put thin items inside.
Then there is this shirt-shaped, which is teenager’s favorite. Why teenagers? Because they tend to pass paper slips during the class. Or, at least they used to, when there was no mobile phones. Typically you write messages inside and fold into shirt-shaped. This way, the message inside would remain secret even if you get some help from the others to pass it on.
Now that I come to think of it, Origami is very inspirational as it hardly uses any glue or scotch tapes. Yet once made, they become toys, decorations, and packages.
I hope you forgive me as pieces I have made are pretty basic. I know most of the fellow Japanese readers could do much more than this, something even more complex, or perhaps original and creative.
