456: L’essence d’un escargot

I was exploring a corrugation technique I last used with Eric Joisel’s Bandoneon and stumbled across a sort of plan to fold Joisel’s Snail:

You start with an extraordinarily long (my estimate – 3.25m) and narrow (in my model 9cm) strip of paper, then start folding slanted lines (using a 3:1 gradient) in both directions

Adding valley folds that intersect diagonal vertices creates a luscious crinkle that eats paper like nothing else.

Adding a taper, it sort of suggests a snakey thing that then can be coiled up and sort of piled upon the rest of the paper that, with a clever series of 3 accordion pleats makes feelers and reverses the direction of the paper to make the snails foot.

Handling paper of this size (indeed even cutting it with any accuracy) was a real challenge; the myriad of folds were easy if brutally repetitive but the end effect is every bit a snail

I like this model a lot but cannot see how it can be held together without a little bit of help – the foot has some double-sided tape keeping it in shape but the snail shell coil is loose and I am sure when the cleaning lady knocks it, it will cascade in awkward and alarming ways onto the floor.

I can also see huge potential for this technique – old style gas masks and other tubey-things, but I would probably start with a wider section first – more modeling potential at both ends.

This was WTF # 17 – how did you go at guessing what it was?

4 thoughts on “456: L’essence d’un escargot

  1. This is so wonderful…the photographs are great too, very helpful,
    I have been studying it to see how it could be possible…the diagram isw very nebulous, but this really helps. Its GIANT! Do you think a small one is possible? I am working with a 6 inch strip, the increments being 1/2 inch? A universe to learn. Thank you for sharing.

    1. smaller should be possible, yes – the divisions and corrugations become very precise but small would have more structural integrity I think – mine was so large that gravity continued to topple the shell

  2. I Think Joisel’s original snail was wet folded which added a serious level of rigidity and insured the model held its shape. Thanks for sharing details on how it all comes together. I have wanted to do this model for a very long time.

    1. I agree, and probably some MC to set things in place (and not folding it so big) would also help – I used Kraft paper, I am sure something more rigid would be much more stable. My issue was finding paper large enough to start with, rolls were a solution

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