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.

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.

More to the point, every key detail in the final composition was folded twice (re-working both the bees and the comb because of scale, colour and artistic whim)

I was looking for a composition that had depth, scale, fine detail, regular geometry and interest – I learned that seemingly random placement takes organisation to ensure balance and sense. I added the golden honey cell units because the idea of “liquid gold” as a common name for honey reinforces the importance of bees.

Working with my modification on Mark Kirschembaum’s “Bee”, folded from hand-made triple tissue (black, apricot and yellow to get colours I was happy with), we have a small army – some tending, some talking, one leaving.

The comb is, I think, an original tessellation. It is inspired by “Honeycomb” by Robert Lang, but contains half-height cells and re-worked corner widgets, I love folding this, but originally I folded it at about 1cm-wide cells, and the result was really hard to fold and wrong scale for the frame, so was replaced with a larger grid folded in duo Kraft and the scale works better with the bees.