papercraft

Papercraft is the practice of creating sculptures, models, and decorative objects from paper or cardboard. It encompasses a wide range of techniques, including folding (origami), cutting (kirigami and papercutting), shaping, and assembling paper into three-dimensional forms. Papercraft can be pursued as a hobby, an art form, or a design method, and it overlaps with paper sculpture, pop-up engineering, and architectural modelling.

Paper originated in China and spread to Japan, where origami developed into a refined tradition. Papercutting has ancient roots in several regions, including China and the Middle East. In the modern era, papercraft expanded with printing, mass production, and the advent of pop-up books, which introduced movable mechanisms and three-dimensional effects.

Materials used in papercraft include origami paper (kami), printer or construction paper, cardstock, and specialty papers. Common tools are scissors, craft knives, bone folders, glue or adhesive tape, and scoring implements. Techniques range from precise folding and tearing to tessellations, wet folding, and modular construction.

Variants include origami, which folds without cutting; kirigami, which adds cuts; modular origami, which assembles many units into a larger form; and paper engineering, which creates pop-up elements for cards and books. Notable practitioners include Akira Yoshizawa, who standardized origami diagrams; Tomoko Fuse, known for modular designs; and pop-up book artists Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart.

Today, papercraft is used in education to teach geometry and spatial reasoning, in art and sculpture as a medium, and in design and publishing for prototypes, decorative items, and interactive books.