In the past couple weeks, I’ve been experimenting with papers. Methylcellulose is commonly used in complex origami to size paper, making soft papers stiffer and easier to wet-fold, or to back-coat two sheets of paper and adhere them together.

Since the Elephant Hide paper I usually use doesn’t need to be sized, I didn’t try out methylcellulose until very recently. Since my designs need fairly stiff, thick papers, even adding methylcellulose isn’t enough to make some papers usable. But, if the pretty paper is thin enough, I can use methylcellulose to adhere it to Elephant Hide, and the double-layer paper folds essentially like a sheet of Elephant Hide.

This model is folded from a fairly thin sheet of marbled paper adhered to Elephant Hide. The marbled paper has a bit of texture, so it didn’t stick to the Elephant Hide quite as well as I had hoped, but I was still able to fold it into a relatively simple vase form.

This piece is a continued exploration of origami and ceramic forms, incorporating shapes inspired by my Intersections series. The shapes of the origami and ceramic pieces are nearly the same, and the colored pattern continues from one piece to the other. The design process for these pieces is a bit different from my usual origami designs. Since the ceramic piece shrinks during the drying and firing process, it’s hard to get the precise dimensions that I’m used to in origami. I made the ceramic piece first keeping in mind the constraints of what shapes I can fold, then measured the ceramic piece and folded the paper to fit it exactly.

The difference in precision is also visible in the colored pattern. The ceramic glaze runs and drips a bit during the firing process, and the layering of the blue and white glazes makes the colors a bit mottled. On the origami piece, I taped off the painted edges as I usually do to get precise lines, but I deliberately mottled the paint to mimic the colors in the glaze.

This piece is also part of my ongoing geometric series. The shape is similar to my bent diagonal shift vase, but the top section incorporates one of my bend variations and ends up perpendicular to the plane of the diagonal shift.

This model is somewhat similar to my last horizontal shift piece, but with a central diagonal section added. The folding is very similar to my recent doubly bent vase, but with the directions of the two crimp-bend elements reversed.

This piece is part of my new series of geometric vases. I’ve been working on diagonal shifts for several years, and a couple months ago I figured out how to combine the uphill diagonal shift with crimp-bends to make a downhill diagonal shift. For this model, I combined the diagonal shift with my new crimp-bend variation to get the horizontal shift.

This piece incorporates two of my recent crimp-bend variations. I picked the length and angle of the central section to perfect stack the top and bottom sections of the vase. From a perfect side view, the side cutouts are 30-60-90 triangles, which means the math is based on fairly straightforward ratios.

I like that these new bends still have some of the ‘impossible’ feel of the diagonal shifts, but with a bit of a different character. The diagonal shifts usually cut the vase into pieces that could be reassembled into a cylinder, but the bend elements tend to give pieces that don’t necessarily fit back together. And since all of these pieces can be combined, I have a lot of new possibilities I can explore.

This piece uses the new variation on the crimp bend I recently developed. The shape is somewhat reminiscent of my recent bent diagonal shift vase, but with no diagonal shift element. The new bend variation leaves a portion of the bend plane exposed.

This piece is also a part of my new diagonal shift series, somewhat inspired by my original Floating Diagonal Shift Vase. This is my first piece to incorporate a downhill diagonal shift with a change in width. Like one of my most recent pieces, since the uphill and downhill shifts are at the same angle, the top and bottom part of the vase line up vertically.

This piece is another addition to my new diagonal shift series. The crease pattern is fairly similar to my most recent piece, with some rearrangements and rotations. The downhill shift lets me create these pieces that look more off-balance than most of my original diagonal shift. For most of these pieces, I add plastic weights to the base to keep the piece from falling over.