The Origami Forum

I was wondering if anyone had a link to a good start to learn how to do origami tessellations, or if anyone knows a good book. Thanks.

I haven't seen the book but if it's by Eric Gjerde, I can safely assume its one of the best, if not the best book for tesselations:

http://www.origamitessellations.com

The easiest way to figure out tesselations is by gridding your paper and just fiddling with it. Grid your paper two ways (90º) and maybe three ways (60º) and just kind of figure out some patterns. Try to reverse engineer some tesselations.

thanks, I might get that book if i can get barnes and noble to stock it. I saw how to pleat a part of paper, are tessellations just multiple pleats? and if so how do you combine them?

Those would be more like corrugations even though corrugations can also be tessellations, since tessellations are defined as the repetition of a pattern. The pattern can be based on anything a square grid, a triangle grid or even free forms.

Yeah, the book by Eric Gjerde is really worth having. It shows all the basics you need to create your own tessellations and gives you lots of inspiration what to do with these basics. The book is really beautifully made with lots of colour photographs.

Cool. I just ordered it, and I can't wait

Thanks you guys for all the wonderful words :)

I do think the book will really help you to understand some of the basics of tessellation construction, as well as to walk you through folding a good number of models. (there's 25 separate models in the book.)

But what's really important is learning the basic techniques, because once you know those and have folded some patterns it becomes pretty easy to figure out how other tessellations have been made and recreate them.

From there, it's an easy step to making your own tessellation designs! That's one of the things I try to teach in the book - of course you don't have to do this, and can fold any of the wonderful models included, but all the tools you need to make your own tessellation patterns will be taught to you in the book.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I'm so glad to hear that others like it too :)

Good luck and happy folding!

-Eric

Wow, it is cool to hear from the author, and your book sounds like exactly what I could use. Folding in class is hard when i have an origami book out and teachers get mad. Having the ability to design my own will be very nice.