Origami Tessellations

Beautiful octagonal design by Mélisande*

January 7th, 2008

Can’t help but post this beautiful octagonal star design by Mélisande*:

She calls this piece “Stars, Flower and Octagons”. It’s an extension of a design she was exploring in December, based on an irregular negative-space octagonal star - the shape created when you connect lines from all four corners of a square to the midpoints along the sides.

She further details the origins of this shape via some geometrical explanations on this flickr post:

It has been used quite a bit historically, including this Moorish mosque (now a church) ceiling in Toledo, Spain. (Image used under CC license permission from albTotxo’s flickr photostream.)

And of course I would be remiss not to mention Mélisande’s new blog, starting 1/1/2008!

La Chronique de Mélisande*

I’d be hard pressed to find a nicer person out there. She has this to say about her art:

I’m not claiming my art to be only a product of my own genius, nor have I proprietarian pretentions on it : many of my ideas actually come from friends of mine and I’m happy when someone else find my work inspirational. It isn’t origami until you share it, according to my friend Philip Chapman-Bell.
Art is a way to abolish time, distance, and a consolation to our mortality.

Congratulations on your new blog, my friend, and I look forward to reading more about your creations.

For all of you out there, С новым годом, Happy New Year, Bonne Année, Feliz Año Nuevo, and prost Neujahr! May this new year of 2008 bring interesting times and good luck to all of us.

-Eric Gjerde

Posted in art, flickr photos, origami, origami tessellations, weblinks | Comments (5)

5 Responses to “Beautiful octagonal design by Mélisande*”

1. Victo Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 12:22 am

   Hi, I am a student from Rhode Island School Of Design,
   and I got into the whole origami tessellation thing when i was doing research for my project, it is really awesome!!
   I was struggling to figure out the folding diagrams and methods and had a very hard time since i know not much about origami and geometry.
   I want to thank you for all the generous sharing on this site, they do help me a lot!
   Can’t wait till your new book is out!
   Best Wishes,

   Victo

2. Eric Gjerde Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 5:05 am

   Hi Victo,

   Thanks so much - getting feedback like yours makes it all worthwhile. You’re right, it really isn’t the most approachable subject; most active folders have gone through a self-discovery process on their own in one way or another and so I think there’s a certain amount of assumption going on when things are written. For those of us “in the know” it’s not an issue, but when you’re trying to figure it all out from the middle of the conversation it can be a little oblique.

   That’s actually a great point, and I should write something about that on here - some kind of “what is this all about?” post, with a 30,000 foot view of the overall process and what’s involved. Given that I’ve already written such a thing for the book it shouldn’t be too hard to do it a second time!

   I’m very pleased to hear that someone at RISD is mucking about with origami tessellations, I’d love to see what comes from that… architects and designers always have quite interesting uses for such surfaces, and they’re often never what I would expect to see.

   Thanks again for your comments!

   -Eric

3. coie Says:
   February 5th, 2008 at 7:54 am

   hi,
   ive been finding a hard time to look for origami designs in vector(graphic designing)..i hope u have some more options.it would be a great help.thanks..your website rocks!!

4. Eric Gjerde Says:
   February 13th, 2008 at 10:21 am

   Vector work can be hard to find; you might find this set of illustrations on my flickr site useful:

   http://www.flickr.com/photos/origomi/sets/72057594093785053/

   while these ones are raster, they are easily vectorized - very clean images. I have a 600MB archive file of them which you can download, if you’d like. Just send me an email (see the “about eric gjerde” link above).

5. art student Says:
   February 13th, 2008 at 10:23 am

   I’d like more of these images for a semester project; any chance you will post more of them?

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