Akira Yoshizawa: Japan's Greatest Origami Master
$39.95
Master origami artist Akira Yoshizawa was a true innovator who played a seminal role in the rebirth of origami in the modern world. He served as a bridge between past and present—between the ancient traditional craft and the development of origami as a contemporary practice—inventing new techniques and in preserving the traditional Japanese forms. In fact, the notational system of diagrams widely used today to indicate how models are folded was developed mainly by him. Above all, Yoshizawa was responsible for elevating origami to the status of an art form.
This beautiful origami book is the first comprehensive survey of the extraordinary work of Akira Yoshizawa. In addition to 60 models from his private collection, it features over 1,000 original drawings by the artist, and English translations of his writings in Japanese on origami, all of which are published here for the very first time
Born in 1911, Akira Yoshizawa is the father of modern origami. The publication of his first collection of models in the early 1950s caused a major sensation. In 1955, his original works were exhibited for the first time at a show in Amsterdam, an enormously successful event that introduced him to the West. It was during these years that he came up with a system of notation based on a series of symbols and graphic signs indicating various types of folds and thus created a method that was later adopted by many origami artists and is still in use today. In subsequent decades Yoshizawa folded and taught origami, published books on the art, and participated in innumerable events on an international scale.
The Tuttle Publishing company was founded in 1832 in the small New England town of Rutland, Vermont — making it one of the oldest American publishers in operation today. Their core values remain as strong today as they were then—to publish best-in-class books which bring people together one page at a time. Since 1948, when the company established a publishing outpost in Japan, Tuttle has become a leader in producing English-language books about the arts, languages and cultures of Asia.
Size: 9.5 x 12.3"
