8. Pleat Pleat

8. Pleat Pleat

We’ve all seen fancy ways to pleat and tuck fabric in the fashion world. Guess what? There are a variety of ways in which artists have adapted these techniques in paper. In Playing With Paper, I feature a couple of artists who fold paper in unique ways.
Artist Chris Palmer is author of the book Shadowfolds. This book focuses on folding fabric, but Chris has done many of these folds in paper. Samples of his work appear in two of my books, Paper Illuminated and Playing With Paper. Watch this deployable table flower unfold.

Deployable Table Flower 10-Fold from Chris K. Palmer on Vimeo.

Folded kite paper, by Chris K. Palmer


Paul Jackson lives in Israel and has been writing about and working with paper for over 20 years. He has written 25 publications on origami, paper folding, pop-ups and more. One of my favorites is this book, Folding Techniques for Designers. The book comes with a CD with patterns you can print out. The print-outs are color coded, so that you can see which folds are mountains and which are valleys. It makes folding these complex structures somewhat manageable (for people like me who are fold-challenged).

Folding Techniques for Designers, by Paul Jackson


Paul is the teacher or inspirer of many well-known paper folders today, and the following pieces of his are folded from single uncut sheets of paper.

Folded paper sculptures. by Paul Jackson


Synchronicity abounds. When I was just about to start writing Playing With Paper, I was in Minneapolis teaching a workshop and staying with my friend and colleague Amanda Degener. (An aside, Amanda and her business partner Bridget O’Malley run Cave Paper in Minneapolis and sell their sturdy handmade papers through retail shops around the country). Amanda told me about Eric Gjerde (who had been her housemate a few years back) and showed me his book. Origami Tesselations. Well, you can guess the rest of the story (yes, his work is featured in the book).
Here are a few examples of Eric’s work:

Waterbomb 2, by Eric Gjerde


Square Weave, by Eric Gjerde


Dragon Helix, by Eric Gjerde


Eric has a fabulous blog and often shares his patterns for tesselations he has created.
What other sorts of paper pleating have you seen? Please share by e-mailing or leaving me a comment below.
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About the 25 Days of Paper: I’m going to be a crazy blogger in December, featuring cool paper products, projects, blogs, books, or papers each day. Join in the fun by reading along! I’ll also post links on my FaceBook page. Enjoy the season!

9 Comments

  1. Dagmar says:

    Definitely to be mentioned: Tomoko Fuse, especially her book “Spiral: Origami Art Design”. An just recently folded example of her inventions – the navel shell – you found on my website http://designreiche.de/projects/falten-falten/.
    Greetings from Germany
    Dagmar

  2. Susan Janes says:

    Wow! Thanks for this amazing post. I was already on to Paul Jackson – his “Structural Packaging” is my box-making bible. But I had’t seen these pics. The Gjerde material is awesome, too.

  3. Helen,
    Did you ever hear of Golden Venture Paper Folding? The Golden Venture was a boat carrying Chinese immigrants to the USA (not officially), which ran aground. Some of the people died, but some made it to the USA, only to be incarcerated in PA. A local church took up their cause, but many of the prisoners, in order to pass the time, created origami sculptures using a modular origami traditional form that they had learned as kids in China. You can see some of the pieces here: http://www.origami-resource-center.com/golden-venture-folding.html
    Anyway, some of them did eventually get released to live in the USA, though some were deported to other countries. But the orgami technique they did there has become known as the Golden Venture.
    Michelle

  4. Linda K. Fendley says:

    Fun Stuff!

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    posts ideas.

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