Gay Merril Gross has seen my post on the pipe cleaner flower. She did not see
the original posting.
>From Gay:
I’m not sure what your original question was but my version of the story is
different.
In 1976, the teachers’ program in Israel I was part of, was temporarily housed
in the Neot Midbar (Desert Inn) hotel in Beer Sheva, Israel. The bartender at
the hotel bar was a young woman from Argentina. She taught me how to make a
modular flower from the silver paper that lined the packages of some cigarettes
such as Marlboro. The foil paper was cut into 3 squares (these were folded into
the three petal units that formed the 6 petals) and a long rectangular strip.
The strip was twisted to make the stem which was first wrapped around the petal
units and then twisted to hold them in place.
In August of 1979 I attended my first evening meeting at Lillian Oppenheimer’s
Origami Center. A month or so later I attended my first meeting of Lillian’s
Wednesday daytime meeting which at the time was held at The New School. I came
to the meeting prepared to teach one of my favorite childhood models that I had
learned when I had borrowed the books of Sam Randlett from the library circa
1962—Sam Randlett’s Rooster.
At the beginning of the meeting, Lillian would go around the table and asked
each person, what, if anything, they had brought to teach. When I offered to
teach the Rooster, I was very disappointed when Lillian said, “Oh we know that
model already.” At the next meeting I attended I was hoping to share a model
that they would not know, so I brought the Flower from the cigarette paper.
This was well received and for many years later, Lillian’s best friend, Bea
Goldberg, recalled how pleased she was to learn the model from me
.
One of the women who attended Lillian’s meetings was Anna Lee Culp, a fourth
grade teacher. She had introduced origami to her good friend, Becky Berman, an
art teacher at the school where Anna Lee taught. Being an art teacher, I am
guessing that it was Becky’s idea to use a pipe cleaner instead of the twisted
foil for creating the stem and holding the petal units together. But another
big difference between the cigarette paper model and the one that Mark learned
from Becky was that Becky folded the flower units from 3 rectangles and the
cigarette paper model was folded from 3 squares.
I agree with Mark’s account that someone from the BOS wrote about learning the
cigarette paper flower on a trip to Cyprus.
The Flower from cigarette paper was diagrammed in 1986 in the Italian origami
book, Fiori in Origami, by Guido Gazzera. He shows the petal units folded from
3 squares, the stem made from a twisted strip of the same paper, but he also
shows an additional unit added below the flower as two leaves.
Bob Voelker has a nice arrangement of what Mark calls the “double-decker”
version of the model. He uses a yellow pipe cleaner for the stem but first
gives it a small coil to create a nice center for the model and using red and
green paper of different sizes, he calls it a Poinsettia.
Many years ago I learned a nice variation using 3 dollars and a rubber band,
from Betty/Helen Clayton, who used to host Cincinnati folder, Gloria Farison,
whenever she came to NYC for convention. I diagrammed her version for
Money-Gami.
Because the three oldest accounts I know of the model being transmitted
(Israel, Cyprus and Italy), are on the Mediterranean, and the Italian book
calling the model, Margherita, I called the model "Mediterranean Daisy" in the
book.
On my website there are photos of the model folded from US dollars, Canadian
dollars, the Brazilian real, (
http://origamistudionyc.wix.com/moneyorigami#!money-gami---a-how-to-book/c1ez5
) and a framed version from 3 half squares (using your paper for the Frame!).
http://origamistudionyc.wix.com/moneyorigami#!origami-mini-scenes/c1as2
The first time I saw the multi-unit lotus/water lily, was when Elsa Chen gave
me a kit she had purchased in Chinatown. A few years later Bob Stack taught
this multi-unit flower after he had learned it from a young girl named Adriana,
after she learned it from someone in Chinatown.
A few years later Toshiko Kobayashi taught the water lily at Special Sessions
and related it to a Buddhist ceremony.
Jan Polish has taught the multi-unit flower at many Conventions and Special
Sessions.
Gay
Gay also shared this additional Link
The lotus is a traditional model for Chinese Buddhist rituals. The BBC has a
picture of the big version used as a candle holder -See the link:
BBC: Day in pictures Monday, 13 August 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6944303.stm
Picture #7: Taiwanese people hold paper lotus lanterns with candles to release
on the first night of ghost month, as an offering to help guide lost ghosts and
spirits.
