Japan Habba 2014

Ripples (Andrew Hudson?)

Japan Habba 2014

Japan Habba is the annual cultural festival of the Japanese community in Bangalore (or Bengaluru). This year, the Habba was held at Mount Carmel College, unlike the last two years.

With Mr Sastry of Kolar.

I, Mr Sivasankara Sastry, and SM Huseini were invited to exhibit our skills at the Japan Habba. Mr Huseini is a Kirigami expert, and he was demonstrating making a simple paper mask.

Mt Sastry, who is employed in a bank in Kolar, is a man of multiple talents. He has been dabbling in Origami and Kirigami for more than 30 years. His current passion is to use Origami to teach mathematical concepts. These days he is continually traveling across the country, conducting workshops for teachers, etc. He was exhibiting his life-size kirigami insects cut from ordinary magazine paper. These insects look so life-like because of the intricate details and choice of appropriate colour. I decided to make a few models using curved folds as the theme.

While it had no particular connection to Origami, the Conway Pencil Model (seen
in the above picture with Mr Sastry), made from 72 red and black Nataraj pencils, was a major attraction at my stall. The other item that created a lot of interest was the very simple 'Ripples' model, which is simply a series of identical curved folds radiating out from the center.

Mr and Mrs Hata stop by my stall

There were a couple of other Origami stalls too. One was by Nikhil Sharma, and Engineering student, who displayed a fabulous array of dragons, birds, animals, modular objects, and so on. The other one was by a very young school student.

Apart from the paper craft, I really enjoyed the Taiko drums in the huge auditorium at Mount Carmel college.

There was also the usual Tea Ceremony, kimono wearing, etc. and a lot of stalls selling Japanese stuff such as Manga comics, food, and even Chef's knives! So now we have wait for one more year for Japan Habba 2015!

Energetic Taiko performance at Japan Habba

Vases using curved folds

Inside the golden yellow vase

Vases using curved folds

For this year's Japan Habba, I decided to choose curved folds as my theme. It has been on my to-do list for sometime to create vases and other objects using pleating, based on a tutorial provided by Rebecca Gieseking.

My version of the Daruma Doll

The beauty of this method is that you can choose any form or profile that you want to create. Then you draw the profile on a piece of graph paper,  do the calculations required to achieve the form, and then transfer the calculations and the resulting curved folds to your large sheet of paper.

Usually it helps to score the paper when you are doing curved folds, so I use some object with a sharp tip. Of course, make sure that it is not too sharp, or it will cut through the paper!

Here are a couple of models I created using this method, including this 'Daruma' doll.

Golden Yellow Vase

Wine Goblet

But the one that was most appreciated at the Japan Habba was this wine goblet.Even I admit that this one came out nicely!

Here are some more examples of curved folds and the amazing variety of shapes one can create using them.

Huffman Tower

Concentric Circles with a hole hut at the center, allowing the paper to take a variety of amazing shapes

Spherical Origami nº14 – Jun Mitani