After some time I wandered into this realm, a forest teeming with cycads from Paleozoic times. This is where I would find the inspiration for my next piece.
My time in the cycad forest made one thing abundantly clear. The cycad strobili were the gems of this place, coming in an array of shapes, sizes, colors, and textures, like the eggs of the dinosaurs they used to reside with (maybe).
Sizing up the task ahead, I could see that each strobilus was a microcosm of essential irreducible detail. Scaleless and they would be little more than colored ellipsoids. If I was going to fold one from paper, the scales would be paramount, and to fold a myriad of them would be an undertaking.
And this I resolved to do.
I was spoiled for choice on which strobilus I would design and fold, but after seeing Encaphalartos ferox in it’s bold red, confidently making its presence known among the dark green foliage, I knew this would be the one.
Now was the time to take more photos and get back to my garden hideout to begin the design process.
To successfully fold the strobilum I decided to design a tessellation of scales that I would then fold up into an ellipsoid. I wanted the origami to be viewable from all sides, rather from just the front with a seam hidden in the back, so I decided to design a tessellation of scales that would radiate from a central point rather than in a simple grid that wraps into a modified cylinder.
To begin the design of the tessellation, I took some scale measurements, and decided on a hexagonal grid folded from a hexagonal sheet of paper. I folded a variety of scales refining each to better resemble the scales of Encephalartos ferox. The scale overlaps would best be small, requiring a myriad of very long detailed folds. After making a simple rhombic grid of these, I set out to find a way to get them to radiate.
To radiate from a central point, each simple grid would need to meet each other at a 60 degree angle in such a way that their complex boundary folds (which extend to infinity or the edge of the paper normally) would be able to unite in harmony. Solving for this complex tessellation interface proved to myself that a myriad of scales could be designed and folded radiating from a central point, and that, the resulting tesselation would be a hexameric hyperbolic surface. This hexameric hyperbolic surface is what I would need to then fold into the ellipsoid.
To fold this much detail into a sheet of paper, I would need a thin strong sheet, and one that could maintain its shape after folding. I chose a deep red unryu paper that I foil backed and then prepared into a single uncut hexagon.
I began folding, making the hexagonal grid over the next couple hours, then transitioning into folding the tessellation for the next 10hrs, before finally folding the hexameric hyperbolic rhombic grid of scales into an ellipsoid over the next hour. It took 13hrs of continuous uninterrupted folding to complete.
In anticipation of the reopening of the Japanese Garden this June, Lotusland has mounted an exhilarating group show that includes some of the world’s top origami artists, with many of the works responding in some way to the adjacent gardens. Perhaps the most striking example is a bright-red cycad seed cone folded by Robert Salazar out of a single uncut hexagon of Thai unryu foil paper. Anyone who has visited the cycad garden will surely remember these eye-popping ornamental plants. The fact that Salazar was able to “sketch” such a beautiful and complex natural object in three dimensions simply by folding reflects a mind-boggling sophistication
I sat there mixing gouache until I could get the color just right.
This might be my favorite floral thing: it’s very realistic, yet very artistic (not overloaded with details and pleasant looking).
Of course the agaves were my favorite … I’d hoped perhaps there would be small origami agaves for sale in the Lotusland gift shop, but no.
