The birthplace of origami is still uncertain. Paper was developed in China in the first century AD, and Buddhist monks brought it to Japan by the sixth century. Few written records survive from that period, so the early history is largely unknown.
What is certain is that paper folding developed into a serious art form, and it remains one of the most accessible crafts there is.
Why it is so accessible
One material, no tools, no cost. A sheet of paper and your hands.
That makes it unusually good for children, for travelling, and for anyone who does not want a craft that requires storage or setup.
Paper
Proper origami paper (kami) is thin, square, and coloured on one side. Thin matters more than anything else – thick paper cannot take many folds, and most models involve a great many layers at the centre.
Ordinary printer paper works for practice, but it is too thick for complex models and needs cutting square first.
Start with 15cm squares. Smaller is fiddly and larger wastes paper while you are learning.
The two base folds
Almost every traditional model begins from one of a handful of bases, and two cover most of them.
The valley fold – folding toward you, making a V.
The mountain fold – folding away, making a peak.
Everything else is combinations of those, and diagrams use a consistent notation of dashed and dot-dash lines to show which is which. Learning to read that notation takes about five minutes and unlocks every origami book.
First models
In order of difficulty:
The cup, which actually holds water briefly and delights children.
The boat.
The jumping frog, which is the one that gets people interested, because it does something.
The crane, the classic. More involved, and worth working up to – it introduces the bird base that a great many models use.
The technique that matters
Crease sharply. Run a fingernail along every fold. Soft creases compound into a model that will not hold its shape.
Fold on a hard flat surface, not in your hands.
Be accurate early. A small misalignment in the first fold becomes a large one by the tenth. Line up edges and corners exactly.
Expect the first attempts to be poor
Accuracy is a physical skill and it comes with repetition. Fold the same model five times rather than five different models once – the fifth will be markedly better than the first.
