geometry

Showing Off

| wonko

Our school has large display cases. I have kilograms of origami at home, in showboxes, tidy tubs, cupboards, garbage bags and display cases … one thing led to another:

library display 2019

My aim with this display to to show the variety of forms modern Origami takes, from traditional, figurative, geometry and abstract. Additionally I have included 14 different dragons, a current fascination – can you find them all?

I feature some of my favourite pieces, designed by legends such as Satoshi Kamiya, Robert Lang, Eric Domaine, Francis Ow, Ronald Koh, Kade Chan, Eric Joisel, Brian Chan, Jason Ku and more.

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962: Ryu Jin 2.1 – Head

| wonko

In a bid to calm down and relax after a brutal week at work, I took a 60cm square of red/natural Ikea Kraft paper and started folding… and folded, and folded and folded.

Ryujui 1.2 head

I have been lured back into the fold (as it were) of Ryu Jin folders (nerds who attempt to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s devilishly difficult dragon series). Having already folded a 1.0, 1.2 and 3.5, I noticed that I had never attempted a 2.1.

Ryujui 1.2 head views and detail

For the uninitiated, the numbers indicate refinements, with the 1.0 being vaguely dragon like and the 3.5 (the culmination of this design process) being the most astonishingly detailed design imaginable.

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958: Ilja Trochanowski’s Kusadama

| wonko

Cruising around on facebook, as you do, I saw a call to test a new Kusadama by Ilja Trochanowski:

958Ilja_Trochanowski_kusudama

I put my hand up and set about folding the 6-piece cube, an interesting intricate design based on an octagonal collapse with some fiddly treatment of the flaps to make curly floral facets.

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955: Versailles Box

| wonko

Looking for a rose-based box for a gift, I came across Tadashi Mori’s tutorial for this fold:

Versailles box

Made of “curler” units, the rose-like structure on top of the box required 4 squares. The box lid also requires 4 squares, the base also – 12 squares all up.

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954: Simi Flores’ Spikey Ball

| wonko

Cruising around on Fakebook, as you do, I came across a module that seemed really familiar. I am sure I have seen it elsewhere, but am not able to find it (I think it is a Bascetta variant?):

spikey ball

I decided to give it a whirl – nice and simple, and quick to fold, it locks nicely with a positive paper tension keeping groups of 3 together, then you group the 3-unit points into clusters of 5 and you get a nice positive curvature. Using other combinations I can imagine zero curvature (6 modules) and negative curvature (7 modules) … hence a torus is possible?.

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950: Urchin Kusudama (Priceless Artwork #2)

| wonko

Riffling through boxes of stuff from our kid’s Kindy years, we came across a cache of artworks my Son painted. Being too precious to throw out (and long since removed from the fridge), I set about cutting it up into 2:1 rectangles – LOTS of them:

Urchin kusudama

I then arbitrarily folded them into a modified unit based on one I used that was designed by Tomoko Fuse.

paper prep
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ONE WORLD – Six Intersecting Pentagonal Prisms (revisited)

| wonko

When you have a little time, and 90 bits of paper on hand, you should have a go at this delightful brain-breaker designed by Daniel Kwan:

6 intersecting pentagonal prisims

This is not my first attempt at this model, back in 2011 I folded it in white, and decided to re-work it in colour.

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949: Tomoko Fuse’s Truncated Hexahedron

| wonko

I love a good modular, and this little charmer uses a module not completely unlike “the little turtle” combined to form a rather lovely cube-like thing:

Tomoko Fuse's Truncated Hexahedron

I decided to use wood-grain paper, and the result looks like the work of a woodie with way more time on their hands than is healthy.

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948: “Snow Crystal” Hex-box

| wonko

I have been looking for tidy self-contained folds based on A4 paper that hides the raw edges, so I could try my lovely thistle-based hand-made paper (from the ladies at Paper Makers and Artists):

snow flake box complete

This box looks like a traditional fold, but seems to be credited fairly recently to Sweet Paper, a paper art shop/tutorial site I stumbled across in my musings. Not sure of the attribution however, as many of their featured designs I have seen (and folded) from other artists.

lid and base. Lid is 3/7ths of the sheet, base is the rest

The paper, with lovely rough chopped scotch thistle fibres and other pulp is fairly crisp, fairly thin but had raggedy (beautiful) decal edges that I did not really want to have to chop off.

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Priceless Artwork

| wonko

Culling stored stuff, we came across things we had kept from my daughter’s pre-school years. Folios of precious artworks that, 25 years ago, adorned our fridge:

Spikey ball of love

Glorious and colourful explorations of paint, colour and form, painted, using bubbles, marbles, brushes and other techniques, using really strong colours that have remained so all this time.

I chose 10 of the most colourful paintings, cut 3 x 1:2 rectangles and set about folding a nice spiked ball with them.

I love the result, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it is made from materials created by someone I love. So much better than sending it all to landfill.

Plan B (or “Home is where the hive is”)

| wonko

I was approached by a mate mid 2018 with the idea of an original origami commission, but was given no real timeline (which for an OCD procrastinator like me is a recipe for a little crazy time.

framed picture

The end result, finished near the end of February 2019, is vastly different from how I had initially envisaged it. It was actually really hard to part with this one – so much creative energy went into it’s genesis.

the new happy owner
A new home, Happy Birthday Paige (albeit belated, sorry)
Depth, scale, detail.
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947: Parquetry Ball

| wonko

Procrastination aside, folding units for a new kusadama is always an adventure. This “parquetry” ball looks like it is made from strips of machined timbers. I decided on 3 colours, reasoning that I should be able to evenly spread the edges around the ball:

parquetry ball

Due to the interconnections, the plan nearly worked, but the ball is lovely none the less. I really like the locking mechanism – the resultant ball is rigid and self-supporting.

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946: Regenbogen by Maria Vahrusheva

| wonko

As part of the Sydney Origami group’s weekly challenge, we were tasked with a modular:

946: Regenbogen by MariaVahrusheva

This is Regenbogen, designed by Maria Vahrusheva, described in the following Youtube tutorial video

The units (you need 30 for a ball of this configuration) are quite easy to fold (I managed to teach them to my Pastoral Care group kids – their version of this fold is still a work in progress … yes, I have folded nearly 2 of these now) and luckily (for boys at least) consists of mostly folding in half – something most people can do.

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945: David Nudd’s Box-Pleat Sword

| wonko

As part of a weekly challenge on the Sydney Origami Inc facebook page, I had a go at David Nudd’s box-pleated sword:

david nudd's sword

A basic 16×16 grid has a few extra short diagonals layed in before a collapse that is fairly straight forward to give the basic morphology of the base.

david nudd's sword CP
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944: I Love Lamp

| wonko

Playing with geometry, it got me thinking about lampshade forms. Correct me if I am wrong but there are the sort of “hang-down” and the “stand-up” types common?

Using 15cm Kami, I began doodling, the blue square form came first – a simple corrugation on the middle half of a sheet, folded in eighths only in the middle section it curves perfectly and creates a rather regal “ruff” – imagine nice/interesting/handmade paper and diffuse light in the middle of that.

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