Main Index Page

Last updated 27/8/2025

x

**********

The Scopperel - 1486 onwards

This type of windmill has nothing to do with paper folding but it does seem to have often had sails made of parchment or paper and so could possibly be described as a paper windmill. It is a very old toy and there are many illustrations of it dating back to the fifteenth century and possibly earlier.

Scopperel illustrated in an edition of 'De Proprietatibus Rerum' by Bartholomeus Anglicus dating from 1486.

***

'Glig-Gamena Angel-Deod or The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England' by Joseph Strutt, which was published in London in 1801, contains the following passage referring to a scopperel.

**********

1844

There is mention of a paper windmill on page 83 of 'The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich Froebel's Mother Play', published by D Appleton and Company, New York in 1895, which is a rendering into English of a work by Froebel first published in German in 1844. The English text contains the sentence 'Hearing the sound, out runs a little boy with his paper windmill. It turns faster and faster as he increases his speed.' It is not clear which type of paper windmill Froebel is referring to here.

**********

The Fold and Cut Paper Windmill - 1853 onwards

**********

The Uncut Paper Windmill - 1859 onwards

**********

The Six-Armed Rotor - 1894 onwards

**********

1896

'Froebel's Occupations', written by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith and published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, of Boston and New York in 1896 includes the observation 'In the firelit winter evenings, before the days of the useful (and ugly) match, our grandmothers folded dainty lamplighters ... and when the pretty work was over, marvellous paper boats and boxes and windmills were fashioned for the expectant audience. Many times in the quiet home-life of the German peasant Froebel ... saw parents and children united in this simple art ...' Unfortunately we cannot know which design of paper windmill is being referred to here.

**********

1917

Another design for a paper windmill made from three paper strips appears in 'Xu Zhe zhi tu shuo' (More Illustrated Paperfolding) by Yongxiang Shi, which was published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai in 1917.

**********

1944

'Origami Shuko' by Isao Honda, which was published in 1944, contains instructions for making both three and eight bladed windmills from folded paper strips.

***********