Folding
style is about how the folds within a
design are made. A fold is a change of direction
in the plane of the paper. Traditionally, paper
was always folded dry, and most origami designs
are still folded in this way. Dry folded
designs are characterised by sharp creases and
largely flat surfaces between the creases,
although dry folds can also be used to create induced
curves and action designs in which one
part of the finished design moves in relation to
another when parts of the design are stretched or
compressed.
Dry folds
may be either uncreased, softly creased, or
sharply creased.
If you take
a sheet of paper by two opposite edges and bend
it into a curve you have made an uncreased
fold. If you take a sheet, lay it on a
flat surface then push two opposite edges gently
together it will rise up into a dome. In doing
this you have made three uncreased folds, two in
one direction and a third, at thye top, in the
other. It is not always easy to count uncreased
folds in a complicated structure.
A creased
fold is made by flattening an uncreased
fold so that two, or more, layers of the paper
lie on top of each other.
A
softly creased fold is one where the
fold line is flattened but not completely
flattened so that the fibres lying across the
fold line are not broken.
A
sharply creased fold is one where the
fold line is completely flattened so that the
fibres lying across the fold line are broken and
a permanent line of weakness is created.
Folds of
different kinds can be combined within the same
design.
Some papers
lend themselves to the making of one type of
crease better than another.
Wet
folding (a misnomer since the paper is
folded slightly damp rather than wet) was an
invention of the Japanese paperfolder Akira
Yoshizawa who was looking to create folds of
natural subjects which were as realistic as
possible. Damp paper folds without taking a
crease and the resulting soft folds are set in
position when the design dries. The paper may
stretch during the folding process so that unlike
a dry folded design a wet folded one cannot
necessarily be unfolded to a flat sheet again.
It is
possible to combine wet and dry folds within a
single design.
Crumpling
is a dry folding technique in which the paper is
repeatedly crumpled up to create a random pattern
of small intersecting sharp creases. These
creases turn a flat, non-stretchy sheet of paper
into a non-flat, stretchy one. The crumpled sheet
can then be manipulated into forms which are much
more organic than those possible with other dry
folding techniques.
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