1085: Eric Joisel’s “Birth 3”

Eric Joisel was rare in the Origami community – he was a sculptor first, paper folder second. To him, concept was king, technique secondary – saying that however, few breathed more life into paper than him. The “Birth” sculpture series is particularly interesting as the subject is META – arising from the flat sheet , a figure fights to be born – pure genius in his hands.

Joisel's "Birth 3"

“Birth 1” was an abstract humanoid scrambling from the middle of a rectangular sheet, “Birth 1” was a prototype Gnome, and “Birth 3” was one of his signature Dwarves emerging from the edge of a rectangle. I have found no clues as to how Birth 1 or 2 were achieved, but, with some assistance (and a possible CP shared by @fishfolder I was able to have a stab at “Birth 3”.

The journey for this particular fold started in 2019 – our last International travel prior to the pandemic. We travelled to Hanoi in Vietnam. One of the pilgrimages on that trip was to a small outlet store for a village collective who were revitalising the art or making traditional Dó paper by hand. I bought a sheaf of sheets, all natural dyes from Zó Project and carefully shepherded them home in a postal tube safely tucked into our suitcase. I now had a perfect sheet for this model: Natural Dó with leaf inclusions, an almost fabric-like sheet 60x40cm. I needed the shave the deckle edge off one long side to give me a “square” reference, as the sheet was deliciously wonky – this left me with a sheet close to 1.8×1 in proportions.

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Next, the protracted and painful process of laying in the creases to allow the base collapse. The first cut and the first fold are the hardest, as there is no room for error. I was determined not to lay in any unnecessary folds, to allow the otherwise untampered paper to shine. I used the 28 grid version of Joisel’s Gnome, because I like the proportion of arm:body:legs you get at this grid, but accurately laying in 28th-based creases was an exercise in measured mister really.

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1005: Mask#16

Lately I have been folding a lot of faces – some free-form, some crease pattern (CP) based:

Mask #16 - Flynn Jackson

This is Mask #16, designed by Flynn Jackson, folded from cardstock, painted bronze.

I am beginning to get a “feel” for facial features – repetition and practice of free-folding helps me realise nuances between face structured, position of key anchors (brow ridge, nose, mouth) and how to set the eyes.

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798: (248/365) The Elephant In The Room

In a fit of elephantine existentialism, one must ask an important question: “What makes a good Origami Elephant?”:

This is Paul Jackson’s “One Fold Elephant” – is it a good elephant and how would we know? What are ESSENTIAL characteristics that a model should have to be considered elephantine? Obvious characteristics of an elephant (well, for anyone who has ever actually seen one) could include discernible TRUNK, big(ish) flappy EARS and a big solid BODY. We could visually recognise an elephant with way less information than that so why do we require mind-popping details implicit in super-complex paper renderings of elephants when something much simpler does the job.

Purists would argue that all origami is, in essence, figurative representations of real objects. Thereby origami models are in effect are so many levels of abstraction from the real thing that there are no valid metrics that apply the the “goodnicity” of the rendering. Continue reading

591: (41/360) Miura Ori Fold

Paper-influenced materials engineering has gained incredible momentum in the last few years as ancient and modern folding techniques get applied to modern materials:


The Miura Ori fold is a fascinating corrugation that takes large flat surfaces, divides them up into “shallow” parallelograms, re-arranges the creases into alternate rows of mountain and valley across the folded field to make a self-organising surface. Continue reading

504: Coxless Four

Rowing is huge at my school – a veritable machine that hundreds of kids get very passionate about, a gear-fest like few others:504CoxlessFour

Seems the purpose of the sport is to put boys in lycra, sitting atop tiny fiberglass shells, armed with a paddle rowing furiously backwards across vast distances of water. The competitive nature sees rowers exerting huge amounts of energy, enthusiasm and biomass in singles, teams of 2,4,and 8 with or without cox against other equally keyed-up teams. Quite a spectacle.504CoxlessFourView

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