The Public Paperfolding History Project

Many of you already know that for some years now I have been trying to gather all the available evidence about paperfolding history (up to1970) together in one place and make it publicly available online for reference and study. This rather grandiose scheme has turned out to be much more time consuming than I ever imagined … but a man has to do something in his retirement. Right?

You might wonder why such a project is necessary at all when we already have the Lister List, that wonderful compilation of all the writings about paperfolding history of the late David Lister, (which you can find on the British Origami Society website here). Well, there are two main reasons.

Firstly, David wrote much of the Lister List material before Google, and the Internet Archive, and Hathi Trust etc digitalised so many old books and provided us with a much greater body of evidence to draw on. Most of what he wrote still stands the test of time but, inevitably, other parts have become a little outdated.

Secondly, David’s object in writing his articles was to share his knowledge with other paperfolders. He was not writing academic papers, and consequently he did not always say where his information was obtained from.

Thirdly, although David toyed with the idea of writing a broad brush history of paperfolding, as far as I know, he never got around to actually doing it. His writings elucidate many interesting aspects of paperfolding in some detail but the links between them were often left unexplained, or possibly unexplored.

Of course, I do not pretend to know everything there is to know about paperfolding history. All I am doing is collecting information, analysing it as best I can, and arranging the facts into what I hope is a plausible historical narrative. But that information, every little bit of it that I can find myself, or which other people generously send me, is not hidden away in some dusty archive but freely available on your laptop or PC.

You can find the Public Paperfolding History Project homepage here. It’s a big site, and it may take you a while to find your way around, but there is a huge amount of information there if you are interested enough to delve into its depths.

PS: The first image on this page is a detail from 'Spring' by Gorakutei Sadahiro, which can be dated to between 1830 and 1847, and in which the child at the back is wearing a kimono patterned with Paper Cranes, Paper Boats and Star-shaped Boxes. The second is diagrams showing how to fold a Yuan Bao from 'Xu Zhe zhi tu shuo' (More Illustrated Paperfolding) by Yongxiang Shi, which was published in Shanghai in 1917. And the third is an Italian propaganda postcard from the second world war suggesting that ‘Le Flotte Inglesi’ (ie the English Fleet) is not to be feared. I have no idea why a Scotsman holding children’s balloons features in this image.