Origami
By:Sandra
If you
have never heard of origami, origami is the art of paper folding. Books
say that paper was first invented in China by a person named Cai Lun in
105 A.D. A little example of paper folding in China was the yuan bao.
Yuan bao was theoldest example of paper folding trying to resemble the
golden nuggets. The piece are then burn for offering to the gods and
their dead relatives. People don’t know when this tradition of folding
yuan bao started but it continues to this day. Another paper folding
example in
China is Golden Venture Folding. Golden Venture Folding is 3D
origami.
People would fold the paper into tiny triangles and put them together
to make a large model.
During the
6th century, paper was introduced to Korea and Japan by Buddhist monks.
Paper folding was now a from of art and became into what we know
as “origami”. In Japan paper was expensive and was not sold in public
stores. In religious and formal ceremonies paper folding was not
allowed. In traditional wedding, paper butterflies were used to
decorate the wine bottles. The butterflies were called Mecho and Ocho
and were the first form of drawn origami. Mecho was a female and Ocho
was the male. In Japan there are rules of proper behavior when it came
to giving and receiving gifts. Paper was folded in different ways to
represent different things like “Origami Tsuki” was a folded piece of
paper that held a valuable gift and it served as a certificate of
trust. “Noshi” was a folded piece of paper that held a gift and a token
of good fortune. “Tsutsumi” was a formal gift wrapper. The folds were
easy and it represented for honesty and safety.
At the bottom there is a video of
how to fold origami hearts and flapping cranes.