Jeff Beynon

Life

Jeff Beynon was born in Wales in 1954 and studied Graphic Design at Art College in Bath before settling in the small town of Corsham near Bristol. For many years, he worked as a gardener in charge of maintaining the gardens and grounds of Hartham Park, a magnificent old Georgian manor house.

Contribution to the Development of Paper Folding

Like many British folders, Jeff first discovered origami through the books of Robert Harbin, and he recalled folding the Swan and Sampan as a boy. In 1981, he joined the British Origami Society, and by 1982 was already producing his own original designs. At first, he did not show them around much, but after receiving compliments from none other than Yoshihide Momotani at a convention in 1986, he grew more confident and began to display his work at local exhibitions for the public, with around 200 models. He was also featured on local radio and demonstrated origami at fund-raising events.

Although shy and retiring by nature, Jeff became well known and admired in the origami world, which really started to take notice of his work when he produced his first British Origami Society booklet in 1989, entitled simply “Origami”. This was followed by four more booklets, which helped to relaunch the BOS booklet series. Jeff was a prolific creator, and he used his considerable artistic skills to produce wonderful diagrams in his own distinctive style. He also had work published regularly in various origami society magazines and convention books, and became an enthusiastic attender of overseas conventions as well as BOS conventions in the UK, which he rarely missed. For a while, he also contributed a regular column for the BOS magazine “British Origami”. In an article written for the German society magazine “Der Falter” he described his ambition to see paperfolding recognised as a serious art form with its own highly dedicated designers and practitioners.

Much of Jeff’s original work was geometrical and abstract, including modular designs, though he did also devise a number of containers, animals and birds and was not afraid to tackle other subjects. His diagrams usually give a crease pattern with a few step folds but then leave the final collapsing process to the folder. Without a doubt, his best-known model was Spring into Action, using a heavily precreased rectangle which is collapsed down to form an incredible spring-like structure that flexes in and out. Despite its somewhat difficult folding method, this caused an immediate sensation in the origami world and was published in various books and magazines. It even gets a mention on the Wikipedia page for origami.

In the 1990s, Jeff dropped out of origami but maintained contact with a number of close friends. After being made redundant from his gardening job in 2007, he had difficulty readjusting to new kinds of work, and latterly he had a number of health setbacks. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in January 2017 but is still fondly remembered by all those who knew him.

The article was authored by Edwin Corrie, April 2022