The origami art form was invented and developed by Catherine de Montford (1456-1493) who, once she’d finished her cod and chips after Bingo, absent-mindedly folded the grease-soaked newspaper into the shape of a dabchick. De Montford earned a living from travelling from hamlet to hamlet, foisting miniaturised effigies of waterfowl on unsuspecting people to their amazement and delight. Eventually such behaviour drew the attention of Henry VII who had her burnt as a witch.
The Catholic Church supported origami, declaring that the folding of a piece of paper to create a frog was akin to God’s moulding of the creatures of the Earth and therefore a sacred and holy act. Schism occurred when Protestants queried why a paperclip or staple couldn’t be used to secure the paper art, a protest declared to the world when Martin Luther famously nailed a paper horse to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. The Orthodox Church had earlier split from the Catholic Church when they insisted that paper aeroplanes were just tosh and not genuine origami.
Henry VIII’s original third marriage to Tracy of Ghent was annulled when on her wedding night it was discovered that she was origami – a ruse devised by two ladies-in-waiting. They’d had the idea having seen John Bale’s proto-Tudor comic farce ‘Whoops Torquemada!’ – a humorous romantic romp based on the life and loves of the head of the Spanish Inquisition, in which the titular Torquemada is tricked into paying 40 ducats for a panther that turns out to be the paper-folding work of a wily Spanish costermonger. Here’s an extract from when Torquemada, in discourse with his servant, Ludivico, discovers the deception:
Ludivico: My lord, Grand Inquisitor, what shall we feed yon blackened beast?
Torquemada: Why game, Ludivico, for tis the sleekéd panther of a gentleman.
Ludivico: But there be no orifice for which to insert decadent pheasant, the lugubrious hare, or rambunctious deer, for yonder panthered cat is but of paper made.
Torquemada: What?! The Devil’s pulped papyrus is the earthly frame of this fangéd forgery? Bloody costermonger!
It was thought at the time that Tracy of Ghent’s lack of eating roasted quail in questionable sauce at the wedding feast was due to her being demure, and not in fact that the thick gravy would have compromised the rigidity of her folds.
Thanks to the art of origami, it is now well known that paper only folds one way.
Origami has, at times, been at the very heart of philosophical and governmental disputes. For example, “To err is human; to fold, divine.” was the central line in Alexander Pope’s polemical critique on the monarchy, and in particular George II’s condemnation of origami as the ‘pursuit of Jacobites’.
In America, early origami evolved alongside voodoo. Figures were created in order to heal or curse specific people or creatures. The popularity of the swan as a focus for origami occurred as a result of a conspiracy of a jealous and embittered George Washington to maim all of King George III’s swans. Seeking solace in the magic of a wise woman of the bayou, after the Stamp Act of 1765, Washington was persuaded to fold four-dozen swans then douse them all with Thousand Island dressing. The sudden distinctive paprika smell of his swans back in England is believed to have been one of the triggers for George III’s madness.
Whilst imprisoned in Alcatraz, Al Capone used origami as a way of asserting the Outfit’s influence over other inmates. Eventually this led to James Lucas stabbing him in the laundry room after he received a poorly folded frog when he felt he was due a flamingo. Lucas was a petty man who never forgave Merriam-Webster’s dictionary for removing the umlaut from naïve.
Eccentric millionaire, Howard Hughes, became obsessed with origami as his OCD worsened in his latter days. He personally folded two thousand and eighty three origami roses for the actress Gina Lollabrigida, a number he felt was significant as it was the number of sheep he’d counted to get to sleep after a traumatic canasta accident. Lollabrigida was said to be unmoved by the gesture and used the roses to line the bedding for her enormous pair of schnauzers. Inspired by Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s terracotta army, but fearful of clay getting underneath his inordinately long fingernails, Hughes built a massive origami army which is buried with him in Glenwood Cemetery. He even had his parents dug up and buried a few feet further along to accommodate the light infantry.
Walt Disney, popular cartoonist and part-time racist, originally wanted his masterpiece ‘Fantasia’ to be about Mickey Mouse as an apprentice origami student who would make phalluses every time his master left the room. Due to an enchanted carp, the phalluses would come alive and rise up, causing mayhem, until Mickey eventually beats them all off into a bucket.
Special Effects god Ray Harryhausen’s first attempts at stop motion animation were done entirely using origami. In fact, ‘Mighty Joe Young’ (1949) is completely made out of four sheets of A4. It wasn’t until ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ (1963) when things got too fiddly with all those skeletons, and the frequent paper cuts meant he could no longer handle lemons, forcing him to squeeze cantaloupes on his fish, that he shifted to using modelling clay.
The ‘Dad’s Army’ episode entitled ‘Godfrey’s Folly’, in which the platoon, in order to complete one of Captain Square’s competitions and defeat other Home Guard outfits, carries out a scheme, at the heart of which was a ten foot tall origami effigy of Gracie Fields, was actually based on a real historical event. During the dark days of 1940 when High Command expected Herr Hitler and his associates to be storming across the Mare Britannica at any moment armed with big guns and fervent fanaticism, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, developed a plot to ward off the Teutonic invaders. Inspired by the semi-heretical tales of the ancient Britons painting themselves in woad to put off Caesar’s armies, Churchill had a string of giant origami figures of Tommy Handley, Vera Lynn, George Formby, Princess Margaret and other contemporary better known Britons built and placed along the White Cliffs of Dover, which he hoped would put off the Nazis as they’d think everyone in Britain was twelve feet tall and therefore clearly indomitable.
The offensive militarised potential of origami was first realised in the 1960s. The Greek military tried to invade the Turkish held half of Cyprus on paper airplanes – an attempt that ultimately proved futile due to a strong north-easterly which diverted them to Morocco and led to a diplomatic emergency and the collapse of fig imports.
Due to a lack of metal in 1970’s Netherlands, a young Raymond van Barneveld learnt his trade as a dartsman through using origami darts. Ironically, these darts were made in a factory in Stoke-on-Trent where a young Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor was apprenticed.
In 1981, the Social Democratic Party published its General Election manifesto in the form of origami swans in an attempt broaden their appeal. The cost in training up volunteers, and the hours it took to actually fold the multi-paged manifestos meant that only fourteen full manifestos were ever produced, and consequently only Albert Road in Tamworth, as far up as the funeral parlour, received a copy. This was a publicity disaster that Roy Jenkins later described as being ‘an arse wrapped in nettle underpants’ and led to the party having to form an alliance with the Liberals just to get access to the loyalty discount at the Westminster carvery.
The origami of the character ‘Gaff’ in the 1982 film ‘Blade Runner’ was actually inspired by the SDP’s publicity disaster as its director, Ridley Scott, felt this was the biggest ‘gaff’ he could think of. R&B legend, Whitney Houston, once made the entirety of Napoleon’s Armée du Nord out of origami whilst off her face on a combination of drugs at Caesar’s Palace. Houston had always been open about her admiration for Napoleon – her song “My Name isn’t Susan” was written from the perspective of the French dictator imagining a scenario in which the diminutive French general was mistaken for Susan Sarandon at a dry-cleaners in Maine. The remarkable set of figures, which witnesses claimed ran all the way from her suite to the lifts, was later burnt by Bobby Brown in a coke-induced fever dream where he thought they were out to steal his sandwich.
Treatises of Gloria 