Paper fish

On the second day of the festival at the Cinema House in Kyiv we suddenly noticed that next to our stand we have an entire shelf stacked with original origami-style objects made by the visitors, who also expressed warm wishes to The Day. The festival was about underwater fauna and flora, so the souvenirs, too, along this line: from simple dinghies to crabs, sharks, dolphins, shrimps, squids, turtles, and octopuses. Initially, people would take a piece of paper, start making some quaint figures, and say: “Gosh! I won’t manage it.” But once they got absorbed in the creative process, they would feast their eyes on the fruits of their work and exclaim proudly: “How nice! Did I really make this?” This occupation reminded most of us of our childhood, because there is no one who did not make little ships and planes out of school notebook sheets. This is, by the way, also origami.

Origami has existed for one and a half millennium now. Three years ago, to mark the anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy, a legendary thousand paper cranes were flown high into the sky over Kyiv’s Khreshchatyk (legend has it that if you fold a thousand cranes from paper, any dream of yours will come true). Residents of Hiroshima (Japan) fly this thousand every year, praying that the horror of nuclear blasts will never come back.

According to Olena Shaporenko, “paper is multifaceted—you can make anything or almost anything out of it, from children’s toys to genuine works of art.”

There are classical examples (the three traditional Oriental basic forms: “water bomb,” “bird,” and “frog”) and, so to speak, the cutting edge of origami techniques, when designers show the flight of their inexhaustible fantasy and reveal their creative potential.

Origami is a paper plastic art that originated in Japan (“oru” means “fold” and “kami” means “paper”). Although paper as such was invented in China, it is the Japanese who fancied folding quaint and beautiful figures out of it. At first origami was used in temple rites. For example, small pieces of fish and vegetables, intended as offerings to the gods, were put into paper boxes called “sanbo.” Some time later the ability to fold figures from paper became part and parcel of the culture of Japanese aristocracy. This skill was handed down from one generation to another. In the late 16th century origami ceased to be a ceremonial art and becanme a favorite pastime of the Japanese. It is in this period that most of the classic figures emerged.

A great number of individual works are associated with the name of the outstanding Japanese master Akira Yoshizawi. It is he who thought up the “score and alphabet” of origami, which allowed recording and transferring the process of figure folding. Origami requires thin and strong paper that can keep its shape after folding. As a rule, it is white on one side and colored on the other, and it should be shaped as a 15-by-15-centimeter square. Some origami artists also experiment with other materials, using cardboard, all kinds of fabrics, wire meshes, sheets of metal, etc.

Origami began its triumphal march throughout the word in the early 20th century. Masters from all over the world have made a contribution to the development of individual-style origami. This art has also caught on, and even given its purely Ukrainian sprouts, in this country. There are origami societies, clubs, and schools, and the advent of the Internet made it possible to communicate and exchange professional secrets with representatives of various countries.

For example, in the case of Shaporenko, a childish fad turned into a profession. In her words, when she was three, her father first showed her a few self-made paper figures. At first she tried to copy them, and then she began making birds of her own. As she grew up, she was looking for drawings in magazines, designing patterns, and then devising her own original objects. Today Shaporenko has her own design studio and teaches at an origami school. Two years ago she was awarded the grand-prix in Italy for a calendar (a piglet in the basket, with changeable months and days, in the origami style).

In order to make genuine, rather than amateurish, items, one must use special paper (wasi), which consists of seven layers and is as strong as plywood. In Japan wasi was usually made from the fibers of the bark of such trees and shrubs as gampi, mitsumata or kozo (paper mulberry), with possible additions of the fibers of bamboo, hemp, rice, and wheat. This makes paper very durable and capable of being folded many times without being torn.

Now origami is widely used in architecture, designing, teaching, art therapy, mathematics, and technological design. Countless things have been discovered owing to origami, such as solar batteries and air bags in cars. This art also stimulates imagination, calms down nerves, and allows people to discover hitherto unknown talents in themselves.