Nothing but Flowers
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
-Talking Heads
This is a compass rose. When I look at my visitor logs, I notice that I get a lot of traffic based on the fact that this site contains the words rose and origami frequently. That’s a little deceptive, since there are no representational roses here. There will be, someday.
This week, ATELIER Silver, a Japanese folder and blogger, folded the 8-Sided Compass Rose Jar and wondered, where’s the rose? Silver, if you fold the model from paper instead of foil and hold it up to the light, you will see this pattern in the bottom of the jar. Although I’ve been working with helical twists for some years, I borrowed this term from KASAHARA Kunihiko who speaks of compass folding in his book, Amazing Origami.
While we’re on the subject of my frequent abuse of metaphor, I’ll point out that when I speak of iris closure, I do not mean the iris flower, but the camera iris. Like this:
There’s something called iris folding or teabag folding, kind of a radial symmetry thingee that people use to decorate greeting cards. When I fold in the loose ends of these jars and boxes, I frequently use a method that is evocative of that kind of decoration.
Silver, I like your site very much. I was not only surprised and delighted to see one of my folds on a Japanese site, I was astounded to see it done in American foil on a Japanese site. American foil doesn’t look like anything else, does it?
Wow, cool.
I ran that through a computer translator and I think we have a meeting of the minds. At least partially. And I am likewise honored to have you visit this site.
We will talk and fold in future, I hope.
May 13th, 2006 at 10:05 am[This was in Japanese before an unfortunate import/export issue took place.]
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May 13th, 2006 at 10:04 am?????????????????????????????
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Tea bag folding and iris folding are two different techniques – I’ve tried both and liked neither.
May 18th, 2006 at 6:05 pmPoint taken. They looked similar to my untutored eye. Iris folding is the technique I meant.
May 19th, 2006 at 7:05 am