paper

explorations of folding media

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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1164: Kimiro’s Ammonite

| wonko

With the development of origami design tools like Oriedta and Mu-Tsun Tsai’s astonishing “Box Pleating Studio”, origami design has in recent years gone through an explosion of complexity, innovation and artistry:

When I first saw Kimiro‘s new design for an Ammonite, I was astonished, then further amazed when he released the crease pattern – I knew I had to give it a try.

Ammonites are long extinct cephalopods (squiddy things) that lived in coiled shells – these shells are quite common fossils ranging from tiny (a few cm across) to massive (a couple of meters in diameter). Their closest living relative is the Nautilus I think. It is believed they, like the nautilus, could vary their buoyancy to control how deep they were in the ocean, and they probably had siphons that allowed them a little jet-propulsion.

Box pleating, by nature, results in blocky bases, the challenge is to make them feel rounded and organic. This model’s design has a good balance of fine detail and larger surface, and modelling and shaping it has taken me an age.

Initially I was sure the shell was fully closed 3D, but after posting some collapse and shaping progress photos on Origami Dan Discord, Kimiro himself popped into my DMs and showed me the back of his model – a half shell solved sooooo many problems. How amazing is it that in the age of the internet communication with the designer is actually possible. It continues to blow my mind how accessible origami legends are, and how helpful they are to noobs like me also.

I chose a lovely 45cm sheet of green/natural Damul matt Kraft paper (toying briefly with the idea of throwing shadow thai at it, but reasoned that I did not want a black shell or critter).

Laying in the grid was easy – finger pressure only (no bone-folded setting this time, as I wanted the creases to be as unobtrusive as possible), the CP is pretty simple, the shell spiral a lovely piece of geometry allowing a colour change.

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Extracting Mulberry Fiber

| wonko

So I had this slightly crazy idea, based on the fact that my son in law (Andy) wanted to prune his small Mulberry tree after it had finished fruiting (apparently the possums are grateful for this years crop).

Figuring the fruiting mulberry (Morus alba or less commonly Morus rubra) is in the same family as the Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera = Kozo) I thought it would be fun to try and make paper from it. Kozo is known for glorious bast fibers (the inner bark) that is really suited to making fine strong paper. I can hear the experts screaming “don’t go there, it is the wrong plant”, but … meh, time to fuck around and find out.

As a test, I got a single branch, fresh off the tree, took it home and chopped it up into 30cm ish pieces (so they FIT in my pot) and soaked them overnight in water. Next day, using a small sharp knife, I nimbly removed the quills of bark off the sticks, noting how difficult this was, but not damaging myself. (this was not working smart … but I was exploring processes that could be scaled up). I cooked the quills in an old pot on the BBQ with waaaaay too much washing soda (I learned from this) until it was limp and soft, then rinsed, washed, separated the detritus from the inner silky but strong fibers and air-dried the tiny bundle.

I learned a LOT from the proto-twig.

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1162: Zen

| wonko

There are times when thoughts turn to the complexity of simplicity:

A few simple folds on an eccentric waterbomb base and you end up with a model that encourages deep contemplation, invoking a calm.

This is Pierre-Yves Gallard’s wonderful “Buddhist Monk”, folded simply (if not accurately) from a 15cm square of orange-white kami to simulate the otherwise vibrant saffron robes.

I am always delighted by how few folds it takes to evoke a human form – we seem innately able to recognise “people shaped” things, faces also.

A lovely exercise in restraint – this is my first fold, as I was discovering how to isolate the head and form the robes – I have no doubt subsequent attempts will be an improvement, but real life doesn’t give you a “re-do”, so here it is.

I posed it here with my Vietnamese soapstone dragon behind. The model is free-standing, it has a fold-back tab that makes it pretty stable. I like the the juxtaposition of the meditating monk playing against the hidden dragon in sharp focus, with the background blurring into obscurity.

I wonder if paper is folded in the forest and there is no one there to see it, does it remain as origami?

1160: Baby Penguin

| wonko

Browsing my collection of Tanteidan Magazines, as one does, I stumbled across a rather cute little baby penguin designed by Yoo Tae Yong that I had never tried:

I dug out a lovely sheet of Navy/White Yukogami from origami-shop, and began, carefully, laying in creases.

Yukogami is a deeply textured paper, making pre-creasing difficult as you cannot see your crease lines easily – for the finished model this is an absolute bonus, but during the actual folding this is a positive pain in the arse to be honest.

A relatively simple base leads to a careful collection of colour-change moves to isolate enough flaps to clearly define the face details, while surfacing enough white to do the body and isolate the flippers – all in all a genius design.

The final model is this plump, almost furry little penguin chick awaiting it’s next meal – fun fold.

1159: Polly Verity Corrugation

| wonko

Polly Verity is a paper artist I have watched since she came on Instagram (@polyscene)

She has a singular style and a seemingly superhuman touch when it comes to teasing character from paper – her paper silhouettes are like nothing else.

Polly is drawn to the geometry of plain paper, expertly capturing the light and shade that corrugated paper naturally causes.

Today she posted a corrugation that LOOKS curved, but as I bathed in it’s posted beauty, I recognized it had to be a much simpler underlying box-pleated crease pattern, and I knew that I HAD to try it.

Peeling off a 2:1 rectangle from my 90cm Kraft roll (90x45cm resultant sheet), I lay in a longitudinal axis gutter (valley), then added a deeeeep zigzag. This afforded the laying in of standard box-pleat fill-in creases that I then alternated mountain/valley to make the sheet one giant accordion pleat that folds up and on itself (resulting is a stored size that is tiny – 23x2cm).

The joy of this corrugation is that when it opens up, curves emerge from the straight lines – like by magic.

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1158: Wilhelmina the Wyvern

| wonko

Flipping through Makoto Yamaguchi’s “Origami Dragons Premium”, as one does, I stumbled across a lovely Wyvern, designed by Chuya Miyamoto:

Digging through my paper stash I found the perfect sheet for this model, a purple spotty Do paper that was part of a prize I won from Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s Vietnamese origami paper shop pre-pandemic, so decided to give it a whirl.

My philosophy when approaching a super-complex origami design is based around “fuck around and find out” or more politely “fold until I finish or it fails”, and this model was a real treat.

A truly great design and fold sequence takes into account the material, not overly stressing it, managing accumulating layers and locking things together to keep things tidy. This design was so satisfying to fold, and in combination with the paper choice the resultant model is stunning.

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1156: OnePiece Den Den Mushi

| wonko

One Piece aficionados know that a Den Den Mushi is a telepathetic snail used as an important communication device in-world:

Communicating via snail beings new meaning to the term “snail mail” but I remember seeing the snails in the Live-action remake and wondered if they existed as Origami.

To my delight, Tong Liu (G.T. Liu) designed one and released the diagrams in Bogota 2013’s conference booklet so I knew I needed to folded it.

I decided to try using some of my Kozo and Cotton paper that I made at Dion Channer’s Paper Mill in Gympie back in February 2024. The paper from this session was fairly soft and a little fabric-like (because, like, I really did not know what I was doing), but with a little TLC and some treatment it was perfect for this design.

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1154: Glossy Black Cockatoo

| wonko

As part of my 5-Aussie Animal series, I present my Glossy Black Cockatoo:

As an endangered species, I am thrilled to be able to have a go at representing it in Origami. Reference images of the Cockatoo show it has a striking red flash in it’s tail features in an otherwise black bird.

Folding this model has shown me how hard it is to photograph such intense black paper.

Folded from a 60cm square of black Kozo with sugar cane inclusions – the resultant model has flecky shiny deep black, and is quite gorgeous. I rendered the red flash with red Kozo containing mango leaves – I laminated strips over the pleated tail feathers and am really happy with the result.

I decided to go with a “about to land” pose, so fashioned a wire stand with a ground outline shape that is meant to mimic the outline of the shadow of the landing bird – I think it works – what do you think?

After a lot of research looking for cockatoo origami diagrams, I found a diagrammed sequence designed and diagramed by Arthur Champigneul in the 2022 Origami de Bogota conference proceedings – this design forms the basis of my model – I have added some features and shaping to more closely align to the Glossy Black Cockatoo.

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1153: Tanteidan “Cubes”

| wonko

At any moment, I have a half-dozen Tanteidan magazines, from my subscription to the Japanese Origami Society, on my chair-side table yet to be filed:

Flicking through them, it is impossible not to be intrigued by the challenges, fold tidbits, crease patterns and full diagram sequences.

Sadly, I contrast it to British Origami Society Magazine – I used to subscribe but let that membership lapse when I got to the situation that I folded nothing from them for 4 issues in a row.

These models are modular “cubes” designed by Jun Maekawa – delicious geometric puzzles with radically different design methodologies. The “Cat Ear” cube is a 6-module cube that is related to the “Business Card” cube I have made into a huge Menger sponge.

Paper friction and tabs and pockets offer structural strength, properly interleaving the tabs make it a really stable piece of geometry.

The “Zig Zag” cube is different – it uses 2 pieces of paper total – each “half” of the cube is folded complete (internal and external surfaces) from a sheet of Duo paper. Ingenious in design, fiendish the first time you try to link the 2 halves, delightful together and apart.

I love these little gadgets – every Tanteidan has at least 2, I have barely scratched the surface of them.

Green Tree Frog

| wonko

Working on an Australian Wildlife series, naturally I had to include Satoshi Kamiya’s lovely Green Tree Frog:

I had a day-glow lime green sheet of Hanji in my stash, gifted to me from a collegue who brought it back from Seoul a few years back. I decided I wanted to treat it and colour it with some of my acrylic inks.

I misted the sheet with water, wet a large glass window, rolled the damp hanji onto the wet glass and then coated it with a thick coating of methyl cellulose (MC).

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Kangaroo

| wonko

As part of an Aussie animal series, it would be wrong to not include a Kangaroo:

The best Origami Kangaroos are designed by Gen Hagiwara – this is Gen’s 2013 design, a lovely mother ‘roo with a joey in her pouch. Fortunately it featured in Tanteidan Magazine #147 – part of my growing collection of JOAS origami magazines.

Starting with a 50cm square of rust Lokta paper – a Nepalese paper made from the inner bark of a species of Daphne, a remarkably durable paper that has natural resistance to bugs, mildew etc.

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Short-Beaked Echidna

| wonko

There are only a few origami figures I MUST have in my collection – Steven Casey’s “Echidna” is one of these:

This adorable little monotreme is covered in one of my favourite square-grid tessellations, but skillfully crafted to allow all the other body bits to be where they need to.

I bought the British Origami Society booklet describing how to fold this treasure as soon as I knew it existed, and have folded it a few times now. Some sequences are nightmare fuel – this one is just so enjoyable to fold.

I recently received a shipment of paper from Origami-shop.com and in it was a 65cm 11 colour pack of the NEW Shadow Thai paper. I last bought it in 40cm square form but it was THICK so to my delight this version is thinner and takes complex folds really nicely. I chose this fur-like colour because it most closely matched the quill and hair colour of an echidna.

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Lyrebird

| wonko

One of the few applications of the Miura-Ori (map fold) that I can tolerate folding is to make the fantail of Satoshi Kamiya’s Lyrebird.

I had a half-sheet of leaflitter paper in my stash (bought some 8 years ago) and thought it fitting to fold a bird that lives in the leaflitter out of it.

This is not my first fold of this beautiful model, but it is my best. Having good, thin, tough paper helps as accuracy is everything when folding the base – so many opportunities for crease misalignment exist and, as the paper thickness ramps up, there is bulk there.

Interestingly, the “bulk” ends up being in the body area which then naturally “fattens up” the bird in a really naturalistic way.

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1152: Platypus

| wonko

Browsing a Korean Origami Convention book (the 6th – 2015), as you do, I stumbled across a Platypus I had not seen before:

Designed by Fernando Gilgado, this genius design uses duo paper to isolate the beak, tail and legs from the body in a really interesting way.

After some simple pre-creasing, you collapse to a base that looks really useful for all sorts of long critters with head/tail and 2 pairs of legs (like a crocodile, say)

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