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blah blah blah, about nothing in marticular – may contain traces of aaaarrrggghh

1189: Chook

| wonko

As often happens, I was approached by a mate to fold a model for him (MJ) – he wanted a “Chook” for a surprise gift for his wife (Nikki) on her birthday. I love a challenge, so began looking for the best origami chook.

Turns out there are LOTS of roosters out there, but relatively few hens that looks like hens – I wanted feathers, volume and a playful but realistic chookiness and found in Makoto Yamaguchi’s beautiful book “Transcendent Origami”, a chicken designed by Kyohei Katsuta that I knew I needed to fold because it was perfect.

After doing a test fold, it became apparent that it was a 2-part model (top half has the rings and tail, comb and wattle) and the bottom half has the legs, beak and fluffy bum. It is a colour change model so with some careful “Kimiroing” I was able to use 2 sheets of glorious black spattered Shadow Thai (from origami-shop.com) that has Rorschach-like inkblots on one side, black mulberry on the back. The black was perfect for feet and beak. I laminated some red Kozo in the spot that would become the comb and wattle and I was away.

From my test fold, I was able to guestimate the paper size to make the chook more or less life-size – well, more of a bantam, but large enough for my purposes.

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Exploring Pre-Papers (Amate and Papyrus)

| wonko

At a recent Papermakers and Artists of Queensland (PAQ) weekend workshop I had the time to explore some early techniques that made “paper-like” ancestors of the modern thing we know of as paper.

I had carefully scraped, cooked and cleaned some Paper Mulberry bast, but left it in bark sheet form, and was interested in treating it differently. Conventionally I would cut it up a little and then beat it until it became uniformly pulpy, suspend that pulp in water and catch thin sheets of it on my mould and deckle.

…but …

In Meso-America (ancient Mexico), they would take similarly cooked inner bark from a fig tree (sadly I think the species they used is now extinct), WEAVE the strips together and then beat it until the strips spread and combine and their fibers inter-connected, making a “pre-paper” surface called AMATE.

I tried this with my mulberry bast – beating the woven mat with my “Andy Mallet” until it spread thinly across the flat-spun organza I lined my wooden beating board with. This was then gently couched between 2 sheets of fine cotton, and joined my paper post in the press to get rid of the excess water.

The result is lovely – with practice I think I could get it thinner and more even, but as an experiment it resulted in a lovely “paper-like” substance that is very strong.

The second such experiment had me lay layers of bark down, changing the direction of the layers each time – when beaten, the resultant sheet spread more, was thinner and a little more flexible when dry – this technique was meant to simulate aspects of the PAPYRUS process – originally made in areas like Egypt from the pith of water reeds, laid in layers that alternated direction and then beaten thin until the fibers meshed.

There are historical examples of both types of pre-paper that are thousands of years old – a fabulous record of written history. In the west, things like Vellum (stretched and dried animal skins) pre-dated what we now recognise as paper, but the pre-papers are interesting in their own right.

I think the “papyrus” process resulted in the most interesting looking sheet – I think it looks a lot “seascapey”, but both are interesting. Mulberry bast, before it is beaten has an interesting texture – just under the 2 outer layers of bark the bas has a “grain” which is lost when the bast is then beathe and fluffed into pulp. I like that these techniques actually accentuated the grain, showing off the silken waves in a beautiful and lasting way.

1182: Clever Girl!

| wonko

I have long since given up on the “Jurassic Park” franchise, it seemed like I was seeing essentially the same movie each time. I do, however, remember when Velociraptors were the main baddie:

This is a NEW velociraptor design, by Yery J. Astroña, from their soon to be published book.

After editing the diagram, I decided I needed to test fold the model to clarify the instructions around finishing certain details.

I love it that our understanding of what dinosaurs must have looked like continually is being revised by science. This velociraptor seems very bird-like, in feature and pose. It is also an interesting exercise in colour change.

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Catching Clouds – Making Kozo Tissue

| wonko

Last PAQ meeting I had the privilege of running the group’s Hollander Beater, processing my most recently cooked and cleaned paper mulberry pulp. In the past I have hand-beaten it, but was determined to give the mechanised processing a try (to see if I could).

The pulp floofed up into delicious clouds of softly frayed pulp after a few hours circulating in the beater. I took the beaten pulp home, rinsed it a couple of times and then pressed it into pulp storage sheets. I ladled 3 x 2L scoops of pulp into my old A3 mould and deckle, smoothing it off with my hands, then added them to my press, couching between. The batch made 6 such sheets.

After pressing, these pulp sheets were set to dry over the next week – when dry they are storage stash stable.

For the tissue session, I re-hydrated one of these sheets in a tall bucket, tearing it up until it was finely shredded. I then agitated it with my electric drill and a paint-stirrer attachment until it was separate and fluffy again. I brought the bucket of pulp and most of my sheet forming equipment to the PAQ meeting last Sunday and set up a bit of a production line.

I have a large vat (so I can easily move my A3 frame in it), and half-filled it with water. Then added 2 scoops of pulp to the water in the vat, along with half a bottle (about 100ml) of pre-prepared Methyl Cellulose (MC) gel and about 200ml of strained Okra mucilage. The MC was to act as an internal size for the paper (to help with the strength and crispness). The Okra mucilage acted as a suspension aid to keep the pulp from quickly sinking to the bottom of the vat.

After a thorough mix to fluff up and evenly distribute the relatively sparce pulp in the water, I was able to pull sheets by catching the “clouds” that so delicately hung in the water.

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Adolfo Cerceda’s “Peacock”

| wonko

I had a cut-off scrap of Kozo, so decided to try remembering how to fold the Peacock I memorised as a 12 year old:

To my delight, the fold sequence was still accessible in my crowded brain. I remember that I committed a bunch of models to memory, and folded them relentlessly – I had few resources back then, and the designs available to me was really limited (this was pre-internet, and access to books on origami in Maleny, a small country town, was really limited).

I cleaved a roughly 2:1 rectangle from the most damaged part of the sheet (as I was couching it onto the glass sheet, a huge air bubble formed then popped) causing the hole. I set about forming the bird’s head and body from the most solid end, tail from the rest – the hole is nicely hidden in the ruffle of the tail.

In research it seems this design was controversial – Akira Yoshizawa claimed he designed it first, but the timeline suggest this is not the case. Although he was a design legend, he seemed unable to accept that someone else could come up with a design idea that matches (mostly) his own. There was a bit of a flame war about the model in the press. Read about this controversy here.

I added a head frill because … reasons. I intend to display this model beside the more recent peacock so wanted the models to be morphologically similar. This is an action model – you can push the tail up and it fans out in full display – clever “traditional” design.

Once again I am a little chuffed about how well my hand-made kozo tissue takes and holds folds. This is paper made from finely beaten kozo (paper mulberry) pulp – dispersed in water, caught on a mesh mould, pressed to remove some of the water, dried on glass. Nothing else – no treatment, nothing.

Wow, just wow – LOOK how small and perfect it is. I made 5 sheets, a couple of different techniques but it is all crisp, rattly and strong – cannot wait to fold it.

1180: Fractal Crane

| wonko

I have been making Mulberry tissue, and wanted a non-trivial model to test the foldability of the untreated sheets. I remember finding @taniiiii_ori ‘s Fractal Crane CP on Twitter ages ago, so decided it was perfect – based on a traditional fold, with a modern complex twist:

I picked the first sheet of tissue I pulled from my vat of freshly beaten kozo pulp – it was imperfect, painfully thin but none the less lovely. I cut the largest square I could from the most solid end and then set to laying in pre-creases for an n=2 fractal.

The CP is easily extended to add new levels, but the folds get impossibly fiddly exponentially – an n=2 was a good compromise I thought.

I was delighted to find that the paper took the pre-creases well, with no visible fatigue as I exposed the sheet to torsion and tension making the fiddly folds in the central gutter. Once creases were in and oriented correctly (mountains or valleys depending on their job) , the collapse began. The small bird-bases collapse and that allows the central gutter to form naturally around them.

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1179: Peacock

| wonko

Currently I am editing a new book by Sampreet Mana, and when I saw his Peacock, I knew I wanted to test-fold it:

As a kid, one of the first models I committed to memory was Adolfo Cerceda’s Peacock, folded from a 2:1 rectangle.

Sampreet’s design starts as a square, and you begin with the head plume, then form the rest of the model around this. I followed one of the suggested paper recommendations (50cm Damul Kraft), but wish I had a better colour (ideally blue/green) – I may source more appropriately coloured paper and re-fold this – we shall see how time works out.

With supercomplex models, my fold philosophy is “fold until you finish or fail” – knowing full well that either way I am learning – every fold teaches you something.

There are LOTS of complex steps, and some really interesting manipulations that isolate the tail, elongate the body and separate wings, lefts etc – I am really impressed with the structure of the model. The resultant model eats paper like crazy, but most of the bulk ends up in the middle of the body, giving it a natural weight and thickness and making final shaping and layer stabilization easier.

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1174: Iterative Design

| wonko

One of many design techniques used in Origami (and other aspects of life) is Iteration.

I decided I wanted to make an Origami approximation of a Mitsubishi Triton with a “camper trailer” modification.

I did some rifling through my Origami reference collection and found in the OUSE Convention book a lovely base “Jeep” model, designed by Stefan Delecat.

Folding it gave me some useful widgets for isolating tyres, windscreens and integrating them into a car body … but … it was the wrong shape. On the folded maquette I penned areas that needed expanding and contracting. Unfolding that maquette I was able to see where “grafts” were necessary. A GRAFT is the addition of extra paper to enable a feature – it ahs knock-on effects however of requiring you to deal with the extra paper in areas it was not originally in.

Folding the first iteration of solution, I added waaay too much paper, ended up with a stretched limo, but that sparked the “I can cold the whole thing, including tent with one sheet” fiasco – refolding it again and again I abandoned that idea because it ruined the line of the vehicle – technically possible yes, aesthetically pleasing solution no. Re-working the grafts allowed me to add width and length grafts that I folded into a final proportioned maquette.

Fortunately, the width and length grafts allowed me to add “seams” between the Cab and the trailer. adjust the height of the trailer section and correct the proportions of hood-windscreen-cab that align the model more closely to the actual vehicle.

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1172: Storylines

| wonko

When asked to be part of the Papermakers and Artists QLD “On A Roll” Gallery exhibit, my first thoughts of a “scroll-like” object I could make was always going to be something relating to my current passion – Mulberry paper – Kozo.

I had, in previous posts, explored the harvesting and cleaning, beating and use of White Mulberry and Paper Mulberry pulp from twig to finished sheet. A consequence of processing a sheath of White mulberry was a collection of lovely white sticks without their bark. Experimenting what I could do with them, I discovered they accepted soft graphite pencil really well.

A scroll, to me, tells a story. Story telling is something that humans have always done, ever since they evolved the ability to communicate. Lots of cultures evolved oral traditions (spoken word), more developed repeatable symbology that evolved into alphabets and written communications. I was determined to explore ancient and modern story telling, with the idea that “Once upon a time” was a concept that has begun every story, in one form or another.

I began collecting different representations of the concept of “once upon a time”, and included Arabic, Burmese, Cantonese, English, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Maori, Mongolian, Nepali, Persian, Punjab, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Yiddish scripts that expressed this concept. Using a soft pencil, I transcribed (as faithfully as I could) these scripts, one per stick onto the twig bundle – interesting some used left to right, others right to left.

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1171: Doomscrolling

| wonko

If you have been paying attention, you would know i am a member of PAQ – Papermakers and Artists of Queensland. in 2025 we are mounting an exhibition that explores contemporary interpretations of the scroll, entitled “On a Roll”. I decided that I wanted to mount a FOLDED scroll as one of my submissions, and envisaged a massive tessellation:

I needed a theme, and a style. For a theme, I decided to try and “tell” the progression of the first year of the recent Covid-19 pandemic … because I could see a sequence of “blossoming” outbreaks that progressively “break” regular society.

The style choice was more complex – I love the aesthetic of Lacquerware – the Chinese/Japanese technique of covering simple materials in coatings of red lacquer, texture and patterns. I also wanted to have hints of “Kintsugi” – the Japanese technique of fixing broken pottery using lacquer and gold.

I chose red/natural Kraft paper because the red reminded me of the lacquer aesthetic, and the natural grounds the work in a common/everyday material. I selectively also introduced gilded elements into the finished folded work – symbolising the “patching” of the broken world – I went for a really minimal touch here, arguing less is more. Read further….

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1170: Artichoke

| wonko

As a palette cleanser in-between gallery projects, I turned to my “must fold” pile and decided to have a crack at PRWorigami’s “Artichoke” Kusudama:

Vaguely resembling Xander Perrott’s “Conglomerate” in overall model morphology, the two designs are really different. “Artichoke” has deepish pockets and tabs, with friction locks whereas Xander’s has much more positive locking – multiple locks per unit.

The folding sequence relies a lot on alignment, making the risk of inaccuracies pretty high – certainly I got better at consistently folding angles as the unit production line progressed, but the points here rely on precision, getting pointy tidy points here is difficult.

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1169: Xander Perrott’s “Conglomerate”

| wonko

Multi-unit Kusudama folding is something I enjoy – the emergent geometry and intricate interlocking of units to make a whole is very satisfying. None more than “Conglomerate” designed by Xander Perrott:

When I saw his fold on insta I knew I wanted to fold it – I had not seen anything quite like it, so I reached out to Xander and he shared instructions – how wonderful is the internet?

Let’s break this down – the kusudama is composed of 30 units, each folded from a rectangle in the proportions of 1: sqrt(3). Each unit has a triangle grid imposed on it, with triangular gussets to allow the “facets” of the faces to become 3D.

The geometry of the unit is very pleasing to fold, it all feels really natural, and the tiny collapse of the unit to make it 3D also feels right.

Interlocking the units …. now that seems to have taken me an age – each unit cups around one lobe and inside another lobe, forming a many-layered, staggered icosahedrons – each locked into place at multiple anchor points. It took me a while to master the locking process, then re-learn it as the orientation turned this way and that, but this kusudama needs no glue, and when a unit is fully locked in it is really rigid and strong.

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1167: Aye Aye

| wonko

Primates are a diverse collection of animals that contain us hominids, apes and a variety of “monkey-like” critters. One of the most primitive, obscure and endangered is a type of Lemur, native to Madagascar, called the Aye Aye:

Largely nocturnal, and generally feared because of it’s slightly crazed appearance and creepy long fingers, apparently it uses its fingers to reach into decaying wood to pluck out juicy grubs – yum. I had never seen anything like it rendered in origami until I was proofing a soon to be published book by Kunsulu Jilkishiyeva titled “Origami Oddities”. I knew I had to try it.

Using a 45cm square of Damul Kraft (from Origami-shop) in brown/natural, the pre-creasing was fairly straight forward, the first collapse is complex (an “everything at once” style collapse I love). Isolating the features is pretty straightforward, but this is not a beginners fold, it contains some deliciously complicated maneuvers.

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WM02 – An Art Piece?

| wonko

Those following my socials will have seen that i was quite excited with an idea and it’s execution – a rare 1-2 whammy with me:

Having made Mulberry Washi, I was trying to decide what i wanted to do with it. I think the larger sheets are currently sheet pulp storage I will re-beat and incorporate into other sheets, but sheets 1 and 2 (names WM01 and WM02 – my nomenclature) I wanted to keep…because.

WM01 is barely there mulberry tissue – I will not fold it, but it is fascinatingly strong. WM02 on the other hand is almost a sheet of paper – thin, lovely deckle edges and loads of character.

I had this idea, based in part on my extensive folding from one of the oldest origami books there is – Senbaruzu Orikata. The idea of a traditional Tsuru (crane – the one everyone including me learns first) still connected by a wing-tip to the surrounding paper began to eat away at me (originally the idea woke me up).

Folding connected cranes is all about the prep, so as not to put too much strain on the part that joins – a single point of failure. Exploring the sheet, I searched my origami squares collection and found that an 11.7cm square could be placed, avoiding the holes and weirder bits, so decided on that size arbitrarily. I also liked how much of the sheet would be untouched, and reasoned I would need it to attach to a backboard if it were to be framed… but I am getting ahead of myself – I had no idea if I could fold or work the sheet at all.

In pencil, I traced the square as accurately as I could, then carefully with a scalpel liberated all 4 edges nearly to each corner so I could see the square border, then gingerly began laying in the pre-creases of a “bird base”. To my absolute delight the paper took sharp creases with NO fatigue. Knowing how the bird base was going to collapse it allowed me to place the necessary pre-creases ONCE, and in the right orientation (mountain or valley).

Once the pre-creasing was done, I then went and liberated 3 of the 4 corners (no turning back now) and collapsed and shaped the Tsuru with no real drama – just being careful of the single remaining attached corner.

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White Mulberry Sheet Formation TLDR

| wonko

…so, having liberated 110g (dry weight) of bast fiber from a lovely bunch of Andy’s mulberry tree prunings, it was time to do something with it. I decided to use half (55g), and added it to a plastic container and added a little water to re-hydrate it.

Using the patented “AndyMallet™”, and a recently purchased Ikea bamboo chopping board wrapped in an old pillowcase, I began whacking the re-hydrated pulp using the hardwood edge of the mallet. The shaping of the mallet is perfect, so much mechanical advantage that the fiber was squished in no time.

After about 15 mins of beating, I did a “suspension test”, decided another 5mins was needed and whacked on for another 5ish minutes. BEATING fiber frays the cellulose tubes, allowing complex interlinking of adjacent fibers.

With a tub of “fluffy” beaten fiber, kept in suspension with Okra slime, it was time to try forming some sheets.

My setup was very basic, and after experimenting with the only “vat” like container I had, I abandoned the conventional “pulling” of sheets in favour of the “pour over” method as a means of testing the pulp properties.

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