Curio Folding

Many years ago Paul Jackson explained to me his ideas in which he tries to get people to see the inherent beauty of paper when it takes on various curves. Usually Paul in his superb presentations encourages people to use just one fold which does not reach the boundary of the paper at one end of the crease. He encourages them to begin to see and create beauty by revealing the abstract forms for themselves.

These ideas were a great stimulus for me but my idea was to use the curves to create models. I had long been dissatisfied with the idea of using water to mould paper as this seems to me to fight against the inherent beauty of paper.

In 1990 in my booklet 'Patterns in Paper' I explored the kind of curves which resulted from this approach and referred to it as 'Jacksonian' folding as a tribute to Paul. I am sorry to say that Paul took a dim view of this mainly because I was missing the point of his work which is awaken the sense of beauty and creativity in people. However I still wanted to pursue the idea of using these induced curves in models so I decided to call what I was trying to do 'CURIO' folding. I gave a little exhibition of some of my models and other people at Otsu,Japan in 1994 and tried to show in my lecture how CURIO could expand the richness available to folders which would still stay within the simple but wonderful constraints of paper and just folding.

For those who are interested Paul has written an excellent paper of his ideas in the BOS magazine No.173. My paper given at OTSU is in BOS No. 172. I am hopeful that one day some of the great creators will take up the challenge of CURIO folding and begin a new and wonderful chapter in Origami.