American origami from the early Depression

This December 1929 Modern Mechanix article on paper folding fun must have really enlivened the early months of the Great Depression; I imagine average people sitting on upturned apple crates, doing this religion-tinted American origami with worthless stock-shares.

Among paper conjuring tricks, perhaps the most amusing is the "Passport" effect. Briefly, the thing is this: The performer takes an oblong piece of paper, about 4 inches by 8 inches, and folds it as shown by the dotted line in Diagram A of Illustration 1. He then folds it again, as shown by the dotted line in Diagram B, and again as shown by the dotted line in Diagram C.
The paper at this stage is shown in Diagram D. A final fold, creasing along the dotted line No. 1, and bringing the edge of the paper to the dotted line No. 2, will result in a piece of paper like the one pictured in Diagram E. This is then torn or cut down the dotted line as indicated. The result is an odd combination. The single upper layer of the tear, as indicated by the arrow, will, when opened up, form a perfect cross; while the remaining pieces can be assembled to form the word "Hell"!

Easy STUNTS with Paper (Dec, 1929) (Thanks, Christian Nightmares!)

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Mina

My grandma taught me this funny joke when I was a kid. Before she died, she wrote down the instructions and made a sample so I would always know how to do it.
ncarp

Since it involves cutting, the correct descriptor for this project would be kirigami, not origami.
- Anonymous
  
  Since this involves folding, origami is a fine term. Origami is made up of the words “fold” and “paper”. If one were to title this kirigami, that would probably be fine too. However, a stickler of your bent might just as well come along and say, “Since this involves folding this should be titled ‘origami’ not ‘kirigami”.
  
  To put it another way, for something to literally qualify as “origami” it just requires that the object be folded and paper. One could make the argument that it should derive more than half of its structure from folding, but to instantly declare something “not origami” because there is any cutting involved seems to be a little narrow minded.
humblefactory

Erik Demaine has a great writeup of a proof which shows that any arbitrary polygon can be produced by a combination of folds to a sheet of paper, intersected by a single cut. There are some great examples of shapes to make — much cooler and more complex than crosses. And, the technique he describes works. I used it to design a heart-with-arrow kirigami to do during my brother’s wedding.

http://erikdemaine.org/foldcut/
ncarp

@Anon: sorry to be a stickler, but it’s more than just a translation difference. Quite a few origami nuts really want to make this distinction because there is an immense amount of dedication, skill, and creativity required to create a model only out of folds. For these sticklers (and myself), folding is the central challenge. Cutting is a shortcut.

Google Robert Lang, Peter Engel, Eric Joisel, or Tokomo Fuse for examples of some these sticklers. PBS had a recent documentary called “Between the Folds” that features some of these folks as well.

As for the “half a structure from folding” argument, there is a school of “minimal origami” that creates abstract models out of fewer than five folds.
- Anonymous
  
  Sorry to take so long in responding, and I’m sure no one will actually read this, but your point is not well taken. I am very dedicated to origami/paperfolding myself, but I do not believe the restrictions of one or more individual artists should define the art as a whole. Your citation of a few designers who have decided to avoid cutting in their designs does not preclude cutting from origami in general.
  
  You are free to practice origami how you choose, implementing whatever rules you want for yourself. My objection has to do with people trying to force their personal rules on others in the name of defining origami.
  
  Personally, I prefer to fold models that do not require cutting, but I know that for what it is: my personal preference.
IrishmanErrant

I loved the way the article condemns all ukulele players to Hell ^^ Presumably for their peppy strumming?
quail

I haven’t thought about this trick in a long time. A cousin showed it to me for the first time back in the 1970s. There was a story that went with it about two men who died and were going to heaven. The one had the paper. (Was it a passport to heaven or just a list of his good deeds? Don’t remember.) The other man had nothing, but as they walked along the path to heaven the one man convinced the other to tear pieces off to give to him. The man tearing off the pieces wound up with the cross when he arrived at the pearly gates. The other man got a one way ticket to hell.

As the story was told you’d tear pieces off of the paper and revealed the ending.
snarf

It works! Also with a piece of A4 paper. I like it.
eviladrian

If you do this with a dollar bill it spells “ILLUMINATI”
Quiche de Resistance

The woman with the mariner’s wheel – WOW. Could she look any more suggestive?
timquinn

I don’t know. All I see here is a torn piece of paper. Poor piece of paper. . .