A Paper Heart Is Beating, A Paper Boat Sets Sail

By Kathleen Murray Dublin

Fortune-telling paper squares, a cube into a pyramid, a destiny unfolds, the story ends at the beginning. To make an origami fortune teller, first you need a piece of paper that is an exact square. On one side, colour-in four squares, on the other side mark out the numbers. Bring the corners to the centre then double over long-ways to form a rectangle. Fold it back in and push up the corners. Slip four corners over thumbs and first fingers. Ask a question, pick a number, pick a colour and pick another number. Pinch your fingers to turn the paper inside out and the answer is revealed. There are only eight responses on each paper fortune teller, written carefully under the corners. They extend from 'yes' 'no' 'maybe', to (depending on the personality of the creator), 'not in this lifetime,' 'if you are willing to sacrifice all', 'be careful on Tuesday.' For some the experience of folding a perfect paper fortune teller was as powerful as the stories unleashed by its predictions.

As materials developed and became cheaper, the origami paper fortune teller was replaced by the cellophane fish. Mass-produced, imported from the Far East , the fish was transparent, light blue or pink with a couple of lines drawn to depict an eye, a fin and tail. Placed on the palm of the hand, a question was put to the fish. If the answer was yes, the head would begin to lift, if no the tail would rise. The force of the curl indicated the strength of the response. An emphatic yes could cause the fish to meet its eye with its tail. It fell out of favour due to the limited repertoire of responses. Also a sweaty palm had the capacity to slow down proceedings for quite a time. A variety show of childhood games: the origami fortune-teller, followed by the floating globes, preceded by the musical comb quartet.

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The new teacher arrived in the town with a belief in the educational benefits of paper folding: she had written a pamphlet for other educators entitled ' Creasing Patterns into Children's Brains: the Place of Origami in the Classroom. ' One afternoon a week she taught her pupils basic designs and demonstrated more complex constructions. What really added fuel to their spark of interest was her collection of animals, birds and abstract shapes, built up over many years and kept in a specially constructed display cabinet mounted beside the coat hangers. Once the children had mastered the fundamental models and folds, inspired by the treasures from Japan , India and an unpronounceable place, they began to evolve designs and styles of their own.

In no time an origami craze had engulfed the town. Extra supplies of multi -coloured and textured sheets of square papers were ordered through the local shop. The children also used paper they found in their own homes - shopping lists, music sheets, bills, receipts, old calendars, love letters, cigarette cards, seed catalogues.

The fad seeped out into other aspects of town life. Just one instance: the forge fashioned square frames that could sit inside a frying pan or on a griddle. This created a perfect receptacle for pouring batter. Skilled children would then fold the square pancake into a variety of shapes to be filled with fruit and cream.

Mrs. Deere, mother of Daniel the most talented of the children in this speciality, introduced the origami pancake onto the local fountain card circuit. Fountain cards was a game requiring steady hands, a sense of proportion and three decks of cards with the sevens and jacks stripped. This game has all but completely died out, perhaps due to the arrival of a knife factory in the town and its detrimental impact on the manual dexterity of the population. Mrs. Deere was not a skilled fountain card player but Daniel's creations, shaped like flowers and towers with sweet and savoury centres added an extra dimension to her Thursday night game. As Mrs. Peyton said, washing down a pancake swan with some mint tea, "God spent a long day dreaming up talents of an inconsequential and frivolous nature to distribute to those who missed the main go-around."

All this would have passed, perhaps not even lasted as a memory, all these frivolous and inconsequential goings-on, but for an incident involving a boy named Bishop who lived some distance outside the town, formerly a miniaturist and now the only known paper vanisher.

Constructionists and miniaturists: a split in the ranks of origami makers. For the miniaturist the challenge existed in the realm of creating something tiny and perfect, a design fit for a pencil, a match or a knitting needle. Apparently an eight-year-old girl was on the edge of a breakthrough, folding a bee's wing into her signature frog to fit on the head of a pin. For the constructionists a different challenge existed, designing larger and more complex structures using in some cases, non-paper materials. It was acknowledged that the Peytons' daughter, Casen, was head and shoulders above all others. She was perhaps the only one with the vision and skills to reunite the two schools, but was blighted by her parents' ambition for her in the realm of tapestry weaving, a proud family tradition.

Left to his own devices on a Saturday afternoon, Bishop had run out of craft paper and wished to practise a sleeping cat design. Having exhausted all other supplies in the house, he picked out an old letter that was on top of photographs and documents kept in a shoebox in his mother's wardrobe, took it to his room and began folding. If all had gone to plan he would have replaced the paper and his mother would be none the wiser. Absently, whilst warming up his fingers he folded the paper in half eight times, the maximum number of folds a square of paper could take, irrespective of size. He squeezed the tiny paper one more time, willing it to halve again and the impossible happened. The paper completely disappeared from between his thumb and first finger. It folded into nothing.