What is origami?
What is origami? The Japanese name means paper folding. Origami meaning and word origins. Early folding books, changing traditions and a model to try.
Origami is the art of folding paper into shapes. The name combines the Japanese words ori, for folding, and kami, for paper.
Who invented origami?
The surviving record does not give us a single inventor. Japanese folding includes ceremonial gift wrappings as well as models made for pleasure. Paper-folding traditions also developed in Europe.
Early folding books
Tsutsumi-no Ki, from 1764, described ceremonial folds. Senbazuru Orikata, published in 1797, is an early recreational folding book featuring connected cranes. Its cranes were made from a sheet prepared with cuts.
That is why calling the 1797 book “the first origami instructions” misses the earlier ceremonial writing. Its linked cranes also show that historical folding did not always follow a no-cuts rule.
Ideas travel between folders
In the nineteenth century, Japanese folding encountered Western practices, including napkin folding and the paper activities of German kindergartens. In the twentieth century, shared lines and arrows made diagrams easier to exchange between languages.