A paperfolding paradise

The website of writer and paperfolding designer David Mitchell

The next two sections provide indexes to various broad Categories of Designs and then to some Paperfolding Techniques. In some cases material from the main sources has not yet been carried over to these index pages. You can, however, still use them to locate designs which do not (yet) merit a specific page of their own.

The next section is probably the one that you will want to use the most. It provides pages about Specific Designs, including all the best known 'traditional' designs (and some that you may never have heard of before).

If you want information about, for instance, the history of paper planes in general, you can find this in the Index Pages - Categories of Designs section. If you want to look up the history of one particularly paper plane, say the Paper Dart or the Swallow, you can find this in the section about Specific Designs. Individual designs generally only have their own specific pages if they occur regularly in the literature. Details of designs that only appear once or twice may not have their own page but information about them will appear in the Index Pages.

Below this are other sections that provide links to areas of special interest such as Formal and Ceremonial Paperfolding, Paperfolding Games and Manipulative Puzzles and Paperfolding as Political Propaganda.

Finally, right at the foot of this page, there is a section about sources, which provides information about many of the historical documents on which the other pages are based, and, in many cases, provides a link to a full online version of the document the information is drawn from. At present information in the Main Sources pages has only been fully carried over into the Specific Design pages up until 1951. If you know of any other significant sources of information that I have overlooked please let me know.

Where sources are shown but are not yet linked to pages it means I have information on what they contain but have not yet found time to write up the information.

Where sources are marked 'incomplete information' it means I have not yet been able to obtain a full print copy or find a full electronic copy on line. If you can make up for these deficiences I will be extremely grateful.

Where linked pages are marked 'incomplete' it means that I have information that has not yet been added to these pages, in some cases a great deal of information, and that consequently they should not , at present, be relied upon as the basis for a reliable historical narrative.

All pages are subject to updating as new information becomes available.

Closely connected designs may share the same page.

Some designs, mostly those which only occur once in the literature (or in multiple books by the same author) are not recorded separately in this section. You can, however, look them up in the Category Pages section above.

Subsidiary Sources Consulted / Searched

Undated Postcards / Undated Trade Cards / Undated Drawings, Prints and Paintings