Made from Japanese Chiyogami paper,based on Cheryl Moore’s “Sleight of Binding”
Zhen Xian Bao
A blog about hand embroidery, fiber art and craft
Next month I will be conducting a workshop about the Chinese Thread Book, also called Zhen Xian Bao. The workshop will be at The Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio and there is still time to register if you want to join me. August 13 and 14. The Chinese Thread book is part of a rather obscure Chinese folk art tradition that was practiced in some rural areas of China, and may still be found if you look carefully. Women used these books primarily to keep their sewing supplies (threads, needles, patterns, swatches, etc), and any other bits of paper, photographs, etc that needed saving. My work on these is based on the information collected by Ruth Smith, who introduced the world to this dying craft after she did primary research on these folded books while visiting China. Smith identified a number of variations on the thread book structure and with quite a lot of variation in the number of boxes. This is one that I made, shown here in a video to give you an idea of how it works. I have made a number of these in different sizes and using different structures. In the workshop, we'll be making one similar to the one in the video and we will look at traditional decorations and spend some time adorning our thread books appropriately. For the workshop we will have a variety of Chinese fabrics and interesting papers to use. I have also seen photos of authentic Zhen Xian Bao that use things like old coins as decoration, so I also have a batch of old Chinese coins for the workshop participants to use if an authentic look is desired. Workshop registration can be done online at The Morgan Conservatory.
A mysterious wallet origami with 31 secret pockets. All you have to do is fold it piece by piece and put it together without glue, and you're done. If the A-...
Learn how to make a pretty and useful Origami Chinese Thread Book using 3 origami models ♥ The 'zhen xian bao' are traditional thread storage books from sout...
Learn how to make an origami Chinese Thread Book, this is such a cute paper project, you can use it to organise sewing threads or as a gift.
I first heard about the Chinese Thread Book from my sister-in-law in early February, 2013. Apparently textile collectors had known about them for some time before that, but this was probably about the time people in the book arts started to notice them. Her email mentioning them included a link to a textile forum with…
Article to this design with more explanations: http://origamitutorials.com/origami-chinese-thread-book/Folding interpretation: Paula VersnickRead more about ...
Part of the problem with my internet search for what I was calling a 'star box' was finding the most effective search terms. I Googled 'Zhen Xian Bao' and 'Chinese Thread Book'. I did Pinterest searches as well. I tried 'origami star box' and found many pretty things but not what I was looking for.…
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Posts about Chinese Thread book written by Paula Beardell Krieg
Posts about Based on Chinese Thread Book written by Paula Beardell Krieg
When I began all this —the trip down an internet wormhole chasing a particular origami folding pattern— I had no idea where it would all lead. The hunt for that set of instructions led me to an enormous trove of resources on the history of the Zhen Xian Bao (Chinese Thread Book), Chinese textile traditions,…
Since combining the words origami and Zhen Xian Bao or Chinese Thread Book in my search for the 'star' box (flowered candy box) I have come across a number of origami versions of the Zhen Xian Bao. The earliest example I found was in Sarah Marshall's images from a workshop given by Hedi Kyle in 2008…
The origami forum with the image of Laurent Sui's gift for Madame Burgos (see previous post) mentioned a book by Maying Soong, The Art of Chinese Paper Folding. It even provided a link to an on-line copy which I immediately downloaded. If you are interested in the whole book, you can download a copy from…
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I can't believe my good luck. I've been reading about the Chinese Thread Book, devouring anything in print that I could find about it, scouring the internet then just thinking about and trying to make sense of this structure. It didn't even occur to me that I might actually get my hands on an authentic Zhen…
