The Aart of Paperfolding

Guest post by Edwin Corrie

Edwin Corrie is well-known as a designer of animal paperfolds, created in his own inimitable style, but is also a serious researcher of early European paperfolding, particularly as it relates to the history of conjuring. I am delighted he has agreed to allow me to publish this low-res version of his recent blog post about Aart van Breda, so that you can all enjoy it. Over to you, Edwin …

Aart van Breda (1913–1972) was a Dutch artist, author and illustrator who ran a small publishing company, Uitgeverij van Breda, in Amsterdam with his wife Catharina van Breda-de Vries (1912–1992), focussing mainly on children's books translated by them from English into Dutch.

One of the first of the books they published, in 1949, was a translation of Maying Soong's classic ‘The Art of Chinese Paper Folding’ which, in Dutch, became ‘Chinees vouwboek’. According to an account by his wife it was well received by teachers, but van Breda  was disappointed that it was not more popular as a family book.

Van Breda went on to write, illustrate and publish three other papercraft books, ‘Plezier met Papier’ (Pleasure with Paper) in 1950, ‘Avonturen met Papier’ (Adventures with Paper) in 1952, and ‘Kinderspeelboek’ (Children's Playbook) in 1954.

In the origami world, however, Aart van Breda is mainly known for his ‘Het grote vouwboek’, (The Big Book of Folding), which was published in 1955.

By a strange coincidence, as explained by his wife Catharina in Elsje van der Ploeg’s book ‘Grondregels voor origami’ (a new edition of ‘Het grote vouwboek’ published in 1995), ‘in the same week in which Het grote vouwbook was published, an exhibition entitled Japanners vouwen Papier (The Japanese Fold Paper) opened at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.’ ‘Van Breda saw how the ancient art of origami had progressed in Japan and was being rediscovered all around the world by people like himself.’ This, of course, was the famous exhibition of Akira Yoshizawa’s designs organised by Gershon Legman, the first exhibition of modern Japanese paperfolding designs to be held in the West. It is interesting to speculate whether van Breda might have met and talked to Gershon Legman there.

Catharina continues, ‘He decided that his recently published book needed to be revised, but because of other projects the new version of Het grote vouwboek did not appear until 1963. It now had the structure he had wanted, with classical designs from the Western and Eastern folding traditions accompanied by a number of his own folds. The book was well received by both children and adults and was translated into English and German.’

In fact all of van Breda’s paperfolding and papercraft books were translated into other languages, ‘Plezier met Papier’ and ‘Avonturen met Papier’ into English and German, and the 1963 revised and enlarged second edition of ‘Het grote vouwboek’ into English as ‘Paper Folding and Modelling’, into German as ‘Kempers großes Papierfaltbuch’ (both published in 1965) and into Spanish as ‘Origami: el arte del papel plegado’ (published in Argentina in 1972).

In the English-speaking world Aart van Breda is mainly known for ‘Paper Folding and Modelling’, but it’s clear from these modest background details that he was an important pioneer of Western origami, and one who deserves to be far better known.

Edwin

PS: This guest post is based on Edwin’s original high-res blogpost on his website ‘Corriegami’ which you can read here. (And you really should!) You can also subscribe to his blog. Edwin doesn’t post often, but when he does, his posts are always worth reading.