Whenever and wherever you fold, you’re always making creases. You need to put the crease in the right place at the first attempt because a crease that’s been made in a sheet of paper can’t be erased like a pencil line. The fibres of wood along the crease have been broken and can’t be mended.

Origami is the ancient art of Japanese paper folding, an art form spanning over 1,000 years.

Origami is unique among paper crafts in that it requires no materials other than the paper itself. Cutting, gluing, or drawing on the paper is avoided, using only paper folding to create the desired result. No special skills or artistic talent are needed for origami, although a good amount of patience and perseverance are very helpful. Models can be folded by following instructions exactly. Experimenting with different folds may lead to a totally new, original paper-fold.

The word "origami" comes from the Japanese language. "Ori" means folded and "kami" means paper. Paper-folding as a traditional folding art pervaded the Japanese culture more strongly than any other. But traditional paper-folding did not exist in Japan alone.

Papermaking was developed in China two thousand years ago but the Chinese did not readily share this knowledge. It eventually traveled to Korea and then Japan by the seventh century. This "trade secret" then spread in the direction of the Arab world, reaching Spain by the twelfth century.

During this journey, did simple paper-folding spread with the knowledge of papermaking? Or did each country independently discover that paper could not only be written and drawn on, but manipulated into forms? Despite the fact that some traditional models from different paper-folding traditions are similar, most people believe that each tradition developed its own paper-folding ideas.