Origami For Kids

The paper fan shape. I’m only just discovering it—laggard as usual—and there are some beautiful possibilities. Have our historians, has David Lister or Joan Sallas, written yet a history of the Fan? Surely it goes back a long, long ways; it must be one of origami’s most primitive forms. For me there’s a joyful simplicity and symmetry to the Fan that stands for some of origami’s fundamental, natural qualities. The strong lines that soften as they widen, the hard folds turning into curves, leading finally at the extremity to the cut-edge, normally fragile and still reminiscent of fragility but now held taut, at attention. Rapt. The joy here is something of a child’s joy—the sunburst form—but also that of adult, robust sexuality. Birds with their fan tails were there first and have claimed the field. Women—geishas, courtiers and coquettes, hiding glances behind the fan, or adding a bird-like ornament behind a head’s careful coiffure—were quickly catching up from the rear, while the fashio...

Paper is visibly thin, flimsy; but it’s interesting that without anyone ordering that it be this way, the vast majority of origami models do not leave the cut edge of the paper exposed in the final model—which would make the model look flimsier still. It’s almost as if origami were ashamed of its material origins. A noted exception among well-known pieces is Herman Van Goubergen’s Cat . --Here and there no doubt, in a bi-plane or maybe a bird, the cut edge puts in an appearance, but on the whole this part of the square’s anatomy is kept firmly out of view, as the family embarrassment. Paper fans are a famous exception to this rule. Partly this is because the visible structure is dominated by those long, strong, widening spans. But look at the difference between these two fans--the second of which hides the cut edge in a mountain fold. It is manifestly less alive, less free. One wants the end of those firm spans to have something that opens into, is as gentle as----the air. I’ve notice...