CLEMENTE GIUSTO'S RECTANGULAR BOX 2

Here are step by step photo instructions for Giusto's Rectangular Box. Hopefully they are self-explanatory.

CLEMENTE GIUSTO'S RECTANGULAR BOX

Clemente Giusto is a talented origami designer who has only recently been discovered hiding in an Italian town. Now his work is being shown and taught around the world. In the US, Yami Yamauchi has been promoting Giusto's sophisticated Rectangular Box.

Not only has Yami re-diagramed this work but he has made a die for scoring multiple sheets. With the crease pattern already on the paper even novice folders can learn to fold this model quickly and easily. You can see Yami demonstrating his method in Los Angeles.here.http://havepaperwilltravel.blogspot.com/2009/01/wcog-january-meeting.html


Thanks to John Andrisan, also from Los Angeles, I obtained a copy of the diagrams of this model which were drawn up by Paola Scaburri. This week I found time to try them out. The result was as charming as I expected.

I had one complaint. The internal triangular flaps did not support each other. Whichever of the flaps has been folded over first will fall into the box rather than sit on the underside of the roof.

I came up with a relatively simple solution to this problem. I added a crease half way down the triangular flap of one side and then inverted half the triangle to make a pocket. The point of the triangular flap from the other side can now sit inside this inversion and support its weight, which in turn, is supported by it.

For reasons which i hope will be apparent later, I also turned over the top left hand corner of the paper.




Some of the details on the Scaburri diagrams seem to be incorrect or less than optimum. It seems that the lateral valley folds that become the internal roof triangles should be mountain folds. There appears to be no good reason why they should be folded in the other direction first.

I have drawn up a crease pattern diagram incorporating these features and have added some photos for clarification. With the help of the video of Yami's folding method this should be sufficient for most folders to figure it all out.


The following photos are taken from several differently color models. I hope no-one is confused by this.






The creases which are shown in the top left hand corner of the CP pattern (see previous image) are not shown on this pre-creased sheet. I folded the corner over later in the procedure.











The walls are pulled up, the diagonals are reinforced and the corners are pinched together.


The tip of the large triangular flap is inserted into the triangular pocket on the other side. This becomes the lower roof of the box.


Next, the lateral sides are folded towards the center across the top of the box. They should want to do this naturally.

At this point you should have a rectangular box shape on the bottom and a couple of "wings" on the top with points which arise from pleats on the under sides.





The aqua blue model has the side flaps pulled back so that you can see how the layer with the pocket triangle looks. The side walls will naturally cover this.





The blue jeans model shows what the box looks like when the top layers are allowed to fall into place. The circle draws attention to the top left point which can be folded in half at this juncture.




















Fold up the flaps.





(Only one of the models shown has the top left corner point folded in half. When I put the others together I folded the flap over later in the procedure. You can choose to leave the creasing until it is necessary or you can pre-crease earlier. Note that the original model did NOT turn this point under.)





Fold the flaps over and tuck them under as shown. Fold in the order shown. In the demonstration photos the box has been turned part way around so that you can see the procedure more clearly.










Like the model with the hair pin holder, the next flap is left untucked in the original model. In my variation I turn over the corner (remember what I kept hinting at?) and tuck it under its contiguous strip. If you haven't creased this point before now, this is the time to do it.


















































































Now for the last flap.







You've finished. Enjoy your box.

MY FIRST KUSUDAMA: 2

The kusudama has been hung in my origami nook. I managed to get a photo of it which was not against a background on labeled boxes containing samples and instructions for my various creations. Here it is.











Perhaps all that effort was worth it. It does look rather good. And it's only made from cheap copy paper!

MY FIRST KUSUDAMA

The collection of loose paper flowers has eventually been battered into a ball. There were several glitches along the way.

First it went together like this.




This left triangular holes to fill which posed somewhat of a challenge.

After some considerable experimentation I came up with this filler. The elements are derived from the ones used for the square sections but a quarter of the paper has been "folded out" of the model. This caused some bulkiness.



Unfortunately it proved impossible to add these elements to the constructed ball. The minute the triangle became stretched and stressed the white flower popped out. This may have been the result of the thickness of the paper (copy paper). I reluctantly resorted to gluing the flower flaps into the pockets of the triangle.

This did not entirely fix the problem. This time I could not easily connect the surrounding flowers to the triangle. The angle made this difficult. Then when I succeeded in doing so they popped out when the ball was handled.

I experimented with different ways of connecting the two elements and came up with one which did not put as much pressure on the connection points. It was extremely difficult to achieve it "in the round".

There seemed no alternative but to pull the ball apart (after all that work) and reconstruct it, starting with the triangular sections and temporarily leaving out (or leaving unconnected) those square flowers which were only connected to other square flowers. This would remove some of the tension created by the model stretching into a curved shape. The square flowers were relatively easy to connect together via their "leaves" and I hypothesized that I could add them in at the end.

That worked. It involved propping the final stages up on overturned bowls and wide tall fruit juice bottles. The square connecting flowers were added in the final stages without too much drama. First I added all the leaf connectors to the surrounding flowers. Then I connected a flower to one of each of these points, except for the two polar points. After I had fully connected the four flowers around the circumference I supported the model and added the bottom flower. After removing the supports I upended the model and added the last flower.

Just to be on the safe side, I resorted to adding a little glue to part of the triangle/square flower connections. Not only did I feel guilty for transgressing the traditional commandments of the art form, but the process was a minor nightmare. I had to hold the glued spots with clips until dry. This was both awkward and time consuming.



Finally I had what I wanted. Now I need to find a place to hang it up. That assumes that I can figure out where and how to connect the hanging thread to the flower ball.

TOWARDS A GLUELESS FRAGRANCE KUSUDAMA

Perhaps you are familiar with the traditional Fragrant Blossom Kusudama, one of the most beautiful of the Japanese Flower Balls. Here is a photo of one made by Mio Tsugawa. You will find it on her blog, together with instructions for making it.
http://puupuu.ojaru.jp/zu/densyo/densyo1.html


It has long bothered me that this model, and others like it, use glue. Glue is just not a word generally associated with origami!

So I decided to design a model which did not use glue. Here is the copy paper version.





It has three different parts: two from a square and one (the central core) from a hexagon with the same diameter as the square sheets.

The peach colored material is a square which is folded almost identically to the traditional Fragrance model. The difference is that the peaks on either side are not folded down before the sides are folded over and brought together. When the sides are brought together these peaks are tucked into the pockets on the sides of the sections. One peak is folded into the medial (inside) pocket of its opposite partner. The other peak is then folded into the lateral (outside) pocket of its partner. The central section is now one, instead of three, sections but the petal stays together without glue. (You cannot see this in the photos because it is covered by material from the next piece).





The salmon colored material is made from another square which also begins its folded life by becoming a triangle. The central half is folded over and tucked into itself, in a similar fashion to what happened with the central sections of the petal. One of the side flaps is then posted through the slit in the front of a peach colored petal and wrapped around to the side of the stamen. Its tip is then pushed into the pocket at the top, which it now shares with the flap from the adjoining peach colored petal stamen. The other side flap of the salmon piece is inserted in similar fashion into the neighboring (next) petal. This leaves a triangular salmon colored section between the petals which, from the top of the flower, looks like another stamen.

Continue to add petals and connectors until the flower is complete. The resulting flower works best with six petals. Five seems a little loose.





The hexagonal cream center of the flower is formed from a hexagonal sheet. Once the central hexagon has been formed the rest of the sheet is carefully arranged into a tightly creased column and inserted into the center of the completed flower. The ridges of the hexagon column are held by corresponding ridges formed by the flower petals and their salmon colored connectors. A diagram would help, but it is more work than I feel like doing right now. Later, maybe.

I would rate this as a high intermediate model. It is not difficult to fold but it is tricky to put together. It requires helping instruments (I used a kitchen skewer) to push the flaps into the pockets. It is hard to keep the single thickness petal edges from being damaged by the tucking process happening in their vicinity. It needs patience to neatly arrange the folds of the stem of the central hexagon core.

Diagramming this model will not be easy and I suspect that I will restrict myself to teaching it in a class.

My next task is to create glueless connectors for the bases of the flowers so that the model can be transformed into a "proper origami" kusudama. This is complicated by the fact that my version of the flowers have six, rather than five petals. Six sided objects do not make a regular polyhedra without the addition of differently sided objects. I may have to find a way to modify the flower into a five petal version.