29 March 2005
Yoshizawa's "Hanayome" (bride)
What: "Hanayome" (bride)
By: YOSHIZAWA Akira
From: Origami Full of Life
Why: This is a beautiful model. I'd mentioned to my mom that Master Yoshizawa had passed away recently, and she asked to see some of his work. I pulled out my copy of Origami Full of Life and she flipped through it, admiring the many wonderful models in it. For some reason, though, she was most struck by this model of a bride in traditional Japanese costume. Afterwards, I thought I'd try folding it.
As expected, it took me around five tries to get a reasonable-looking model. Master Yoshizawa's models are famous for not having concrete landmarks - many of the folds along the way are "right-about-there" folds - and this one involves many such folds done on an angle. This means that small changes in folds early on make huge differences later in the model. In this case, the subtle angles to the upper chest, head and head covering (called a tsuno kakushi) are quite tricky to reproduce. I managed to get two pretty successful models, though, one to give to my mom, and one to keep in my notebooks for reference...
