Glory, Glory Origami

Books about paperfolding come in many interesting varieties but few are as intriguing as one published in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA in 1894 titled ‘Old Glory: The Flag of Our Country’ by Albert Elias Maltby. If it weren’t for the subtitles, ‘A Study in History and a Lesson in Paperfolding: Also Some Easy Lessons in Cutting and Folding', you wouldn’t know it was about paperfolding at all. The author, Dr Albert Elias Maltby’s, main concern seems to be to promote his patriotic views, and in particular to advocate for the inclusion of a ceremony for ‘the salutation of the flag’ in American schools, but, somehow, he becomes distracted, or perhaps just needs filler, and adds information about paperfolding, and, indeed, about origami as well.

(Those of you who know my predilection for wordplay will not be surprised when I take this opportunity to point out that patriotism is indeed a slippery rock to stand on. It can be the glue that holds a modern nation state together or the explosive that blows it apart.)

As to paperfolding, the author includes an illustration of an American flag, made by pupils of the Slippery Rock Normal School, of which the author was principal, (a Normal School is, I believe, a school attached to a teacher training institute and thus ‘normal’ in the sense of ‘demonstrating how things should be done’) combining fold and one cut pentagrams (the stars) with Froebelian Folds of Life (the stripes and background). The way this flag is made is explained in greater detail in the second edition of the work, which was published in 1897.

As to origami, there is a surprise at the end of the original version of the book. Here the author appears to have ran out of more relevant material and so stuck in some diagrams, apparently at random, for what he calls the ‘Japanese Turtle’.

This design is, of course, one with which we are all familiar from the Japanese tradition, but, oddly, these diagrams are earlier than the earliest mention I know of from Japan (which is in 'Origami zusetsu' (Illustrated Origami) by Sano Shozo, which was published in Tokyo in 1908). It seems very strange that a traditional Japanese design should somehow have become known in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, twelve years before it was published in Japan itself.

And here we enter even more intriguing territory, for Dr Albert Elias Maltby also published another book in 1894, this one titled ‘Paper Folding: Forms of Life, Beauty and Knowledge’ Unfortunately, however, I have not seen a copy of this book. Was it just a standard rehash of well-known Froebelian material, or did the author have a personal pipeline to Japan and did he include other early Japanese designs in this book?

There is a copy in the Sue Neff collection at the University of Pennsylvania, but I suspect we will never know the answer to this question unless someone who lives locally visits and obtains permission to copy its pages.