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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