The ABC’s of Origami (1964)

The ABC’s of Origami (1964)
Claude Sarasas
Paper on board, casebound with illustrated endpapers. H264 x W188 mm, 56 pages. Acquired from Thrift Books, 7 September 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Its blend of multilingual treatment, paper craft applied to the alphabet and collage of origami figures against scenes of Japanese landscapes recommended this book to the Books On Books Collection as a curiosity. The less-than-always-clear origami directions and the words’ lettering, however, altering between black and white and shadowed to tilt in different directions to distinguish the English, French and Japanese, dull the curiosity.

The ABC’s of Origami is now in its second edition (2012). Without question, Ms Sarasas has pointed the way for combining abecedaries with origami objects.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection. 31 March 2020.

Hasegawa, Taichiro. Magical origami alphabets and numerals (Japan: [publisher not identified], 1996).

Hwang, Joyce. Kirigami alphabet design 7: fun with paper folding and cutting (Union City, CA: Heian International, 1994).

Klein, Louis. Animals to fold: an illustrated cutout alphabet book on origami (London: B.T. Batsford, 1962).