Starting this summer, I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time working in a ceramics studio and start working on a series of pieces that incorporate both origami and ceramic parts. This is the first of that series from when I was first starting to re-learn how to use clay after a six-year hiatus, and I should be finishing some more similar pieces in the coming weeks. Since I made two halves of the clay piece, I also made two origami pieces:
The process for creating the combined pieces is a bit more complicated that just designing an origami piece. I started by making a round ceramic piece on the wheel, then cut it in half and added the flat planes once it was dry enough to hold its shape. Unlike in origami, it’s tough to plan the exact size of a ceramic piece because the clay shrinks during the drying and firing process, so I didn’t start the origami part until the ceramics were completely finished. That way, I could make sure the sizes of the two pieces matched up correctly.
The origami is folded from grainy paper, another of the new papers I’m trying out. I like the weight and foldability of this paper a lot. The wet-folding will take some adjustment, but I’m definitely interested in testing how this paper works for more complicated models.
