After seeing my last post devoted to Robert Harbin books, renowned origami artist and author Nick Robinson suggested that rather than have all those book covers in a blog post it would be better to have a separate page for them, which I can update if I need to add more. Not only that, but he also sent cover images he'd found online for various other editions of the main Harbin works, including several foreign-language versions. My original idea was to include only images of books I actually owned, and so far I've managed to stick to that. But now that I have these others it seems a shame not to add them, so I will probably do this at some point. To see the whole collection, have a look at the newly revamped site menu - or alternatively just click here.
More vintage origami books
I've also created a general page for vintage books on origami, paperfolding and other paper recreations. This was originally going to be just another simple blog post featuring a few classic titles that are no longer readily available, but it's expanded to include some slightly "less vintage" ones too. The trouble is, where do you draw the line? Anything from the 1960s or before must surely count as vintage, and maybe even things from the early 1970s when the number of origami books available was still relatively small. In the end there's no clear dividing line, so I've added quite a lot more, including anything that seems interesting, memorable or just not very common. Below is a small appetite whetter - see the new page for more.
The vintage books page is a work in progress, which I'll be adding to bit by bit. The aim is to have sections for particular authors, a section for books on magic with paper, and a section for papercraft books either devoted to or featuring substantial amounts of paperfolding. At the moment it's mostly Western books, but I'll try to add some Japanese ones in due course and other titles.
As with many of my little projects, this has grown far beyond what I originally planned, and if I'm not careful it'll end up including my entire collection.
For details of the actual book contents I would strongly recommend Gilad's Origami Page compiled by Gilad Aharoni, which currently lists just over 4000 books (and there was me thinking I had a lot), as well as Dennis Walker's Origami Database. For classic works and older material, don't forget the Public Paperfolding History Project on David Mitchell's Origami Heaven site.