art?

Just a Guy Folding a Crane

| wonko

I was cleaning some cooked Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) bark, scraping the outer layers that was outer bark and the remnants of the dried up fleshy parts of the plant, and a thought occurred to me. The residue was really fibrous – what would paper even look like made from this waste?

Given I had the time, equipment and curiosity to fuck around and find out, I hand-beat the residue, rinsed the pulpy mess until it was clean, and then divided the ball into 3, figuring (via guestimation) that 1/3 of the blob was enough to make an A3 sheet.

I took 1/3, added it to a bucket of water and agitated it vigorously to breakup and disperse the fiber uniformly through the water. Then, using a rectangular chinese food container, I gently ladled the really watery pulp onto my new A3 Mold and Deckle, in the lid of my new vat. Taking the time to distribute the fibre evenly and thinly. When all the fiber was gone, I couched the resultant sheet onto glass, then added some smooth poly-cotton sheeting material as a layer to isolate the sheet, then added a flanellette layer, another poly-cotton sheet material layer and then repeated the sheet formation process another 2 times.

Topped off the “post” with another layer of flannelette, and a top sheet of glass. Putting this sandwich on an angle to encourage the drips onto the floor drain, I then added a besser block to add firm squishing pressure, and left it to drip overnight. I must engineer a paper press that is more consistent.

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WM02 – An Art Piece?

| wonko

Those following my socials will have seen that i was quite excited with an idea and it’s execution – a rare 1-2 whammy with me:

Having made Mulberry Washi, I was trying to decide what i wanted to do with it. I think the larger sheets are currently sheet pulp storage I will re-beat and incorporate into other sheets, but sheets 1 and 2 (names WM01 and WM02 – my nomenclature) I wanted to keep…because.

WM01 is barely there mulberry tissue – I will not fold it, but it is fascinatingly strong. WM02 on the other hand is almost a sheet of paper – thin, lovely deckle edges and loads of character.

I had this idea, based in part on my extensive folding from one of the oldest origami books there is – Senbaruzu Orikata. The idea of a traditional Tsuru (crane – the one everyone including me learns first) still connected by a wing-tip to the surrounding paper began to eat away at me (originally the idea woke me up).

Folding connected cranes is all about the prep, so as not to put too much strain on the part that joins – a single point of failure. Exploring the sheet, I searched my origami squares collection and found that an 11.7cm square could be placed, avoiding the holes and weirder bits, so decided on that size arbitrarily. I also liked how much of the sheet would be untouched, and reasoned I would need it to attach to a backboard if it were to be framed… but I am getting ahead of myself – I had no idea if I could fold or work the sheet at all.

In pencil, I traced the square as accurately as I could, then carefully with a scalpel liberated all 4 edges nearly to each corner so I could see the square border, then gingerly began laying in the pre-creases of a “bird base”. To my absolute delight the paper took sharp creases with NO fatigue. Knowing how the bird base was going to collapse it allowed me to place the necessary pre-creases ONCE, and in the right orientation (mountain or valley).

Once the pre-creasing was done, I then went and liberated 3 of the 4 corners (no turning back now) and collapsed and shaped the Tsuru with no real drama – just being careful of the single remaining attached corner.

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