Lillian Oppenheimer

Lillian Vorhaus Oppenheimer (née Lillian Rose Vorhaus, formerly Lillian Vorhaus Kruskal; October 24, 1898 – July 24, 1992) was an origami pioneer from New York City. Becoming a leading figure in the art form in her later years, Oppenheimer is credited with popularizing it in the United States. She adopted the Japanese word origami instead of the English paper folding, and the foreign term became established in the English language due to her efforts.
In 1928, Oppenheimer entertained her sick daughter with a paper folding book. She only picked it up again as a hobby with her friend, Frieda Lourie, in 1953. When she read Robert Harbin's Paper Magic (1956) in 1957, it changed her perception of paper folding (origami) from an isolated pastime to an art form in its own right. She began corresponding with prominent figures in origami such as Akira Yoshizawa, and, with Lourie, began to teach it professionally. In 1958, Oppenheimer and her art form received widespread publicity across the United States after The New York Times ran an article about her. She started informal lessons in New York City, dubbing the group "the Origami Center".
In 1980, she and her colleagues established the non-profit sister organization The Friends of The Origami Center of America. It was renamed OrigamiUSA in 1994 and remains the nation's main origami organization, with many regional branches.
Lillian Rose Vorhaus was born on October 24, 1898, in Manhattan, New York City. She was a Jew of Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish ancestry. Her father was a Polish immigrant named Bernard Vorhaus, while her mother, Molly Grossman, was also born in New York. Bernard was a non-practicing attorney who made a living importing furs.
On October 11, 1918, Lillian Rose Vorhaus married Joseph Bernard Kruskal (1885–1949). Joseph was also Jewish and owned a wholesale furriers firm with his brother. Living in New Rochelle, New York, they had five children between 1919 and 1928—William, Molly, Rosaly, Martin, and Joseph—with their three sons becoming mathematicians. Their marriage was troubled and ultimately ended in divorce. Lillian's husband was irritated by her desire to join him in business, believing that she should pursue activities "[more] appropriate for a suburban matron". Lillian enjoyed raising her children and she acted as the head of her large extended family after her husband died.
In 1928, Lillian Kruskal's seven-year-old daughter, Molly, fell ill with severe meningitis. After undergoing an operation, she had a long stay in hospital and a longer period of recovery at home, accompanied by frequent medical appointments. To entertain Molly, the two read Fun with Paperfolding (1928), an early instructional book on origami—then more commonly known as paper folding—written by the magicians William D. Murray and Francis J. Rigney. Because the book's instructions were difficult to understand, Kruskal did not learn the more complicated pieces. After Molly recovered, Kruskal did not do origami for many years.
In 1948, Kruskal befriended Florence Temko while they were both visiting their husbands at the hospital. She took Temko to the hospital's craft shop, where they made woolly animals to pass the time. They continued this after their husbands had recovered and were able to sell them. Temko visited Kruskal every week until Kruskal's husband died, but they remained friends.
At a family meeting c. 1950, Kruskal was introduced to origami by the stepfather of her son Martin's wife, who showed them the Flapping Bird, an origami model which flapped its wings when its tail was pulled. Kruskal asked him how to make one, but he said he lacked the capacity to teach her. In 1953, Kruskal was invited by her cousin-in-law Judy Oppenheimer to attend one of the adult education classes at The New School for Social Research for something to do after her husband's death. Judy had just married the son of Harry Centennial Oppenheimer (1889–1962), one of the directors.
They attended a class where they used salvaged materials to create handicrafts. After their teacher showed them how to make the Flapping Bird, Kruskal asked her to teach her more pieces. She thought that another student named Frieda Lourie would be better suited to help. Although Lourie was unable to teach Kruskal anything more, together, they began finding new models and teaching them to others, with the help of Kruskal's copy of Fun with Paperfolding. Kruskal taught origami to her family and friends, including Temko, who went on to be a prolific author of paper folding books. Her family also grew to love origami. She sent Fun with Paperfolding to William's son, Tom, after he folded fifty paper cups for his friends.
In 1954, she married Harry Oppenheimer, by whom she had four stepsons, Peter, Jack, Phillip and Herbert. The two moved to a penthouse apartment at the Hotel Irving in Gramercy Park, New York City. Harry was the president and founder of Brand & Oppenheimer, Inc., a leading textile business, and a civic leader. His first wife had died the same year. Harry was supportive of Lillian's activities and they had many shared interests, including music. She accompanied him when he traveled for frequent business-related meetings. She found origami a convenient pastime while waiting.
For Lillian Oppenheimer and Frieda Lourie, origami was only a personal hobby. At the start of 1957, Oppenheimer received a copy of Robert Harbin's Paper Magic (1956) from her son William. The book contained clear instructions for the models known in the West. It also included an introduction which provided a lengthy history of the art form in Europe and Japan, an analysis of common techniques and a bibliography. Harbin had conducted extensive research; Gershon Legman informed him of the Japanese and Spanish paper folding traditions, where more inventive models were being created than in the West. The British origami historian David Lister considered Paper Magic the "first time that anyone had written about paperfolding in such a comprehensive way." It was a systematic treatment of origami that viewed it as a form of art rather than a children's game.
Lister, who knew Oppenheimer personally, wrote that Paper Magic changed her perception of origami from a solitary pastime to an active and connected minor art form and movement. In the summer of 1957, she went to Great Britain to meet with its author, Harbin. Although she could not meet Legman in France because he was away from home, she began to correspond with him and other notable paper folders, including Akira Yoshizawa of Japan and Ligia Montoya of Argentina.
Oppenheimer later adopted origami (折り紙, lit. 'to fold paper'), the accepted Japanese term for recreational paper folding, instead of the English paper folding to refer to her art form. She thought that the English term paper folding was "uninteresting" and too easily confused with other paper crafts. She also considered the Mandarin term (折纸, Pinyin: zhé zhǐ) but ultimately found it unappealing and difficult to pronounce. Before this, origami had only been used in the English language in several English-language books from Japan. Her efforts, and her later establishment of the Origami Center, led to origami being established as the name for the art form not only in English but in many other languages as well, including most European ones. Nick Robinson, the president of the British Origami Society, wrote that origami has been established in English since 1958.
Oppenheimer was interested in origami for recreation. She would acquaint herself with other practitioners and steadily learned more about the art. In contrast, her paper folding partner Lourie, a therapist at Bellevue Hospital, used it for her patients. On Lourie's suggestion, the two began teaching origami to those who were interested—from groups at the Red Cross, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to nursing home residents—and they started doing origami professionally. Lourie acquired a studio where she could live and hold lessons at the Hotel Irving, where the Oppenheimers lived.
Although Lourie wanted to seek out publicity by approaching newspapers and museums, Oppenheimer believed that public attention would come in due course. Lourie was able to get three articles in Hokubei Shimpo, an English-language newspaper for Japanese expatriates in New York, but they attracted little attention. The concert pianist Sylvia Rabinof, one of Oppenheimer's closest friends, knew the journalist Meyer Berger, who wrote the popular column "About New York" for The New York Times. While Oppenheimer was initially reluctant, she allowed Rabinof to send the Hokubei Shimpo articles to him.
Oppenheimer was surprised to receive a prompt call from Berger, but was able to take advantage of the opportunity. Berger saw her that night. On June 27, 1958, The New York Times printed his column on Oppenheimer. The article outlined the history of origami and described some of her favorite action models, including the Flapping Bird. The public reaction was unexpected. Letters and calls came from across and outside New York, including requests for origami lessons. After she was interviewed on Tonight Starring Jack Paar, talk shows started vying to have her on and she appeared on radio and television. Origami had suddenly acquired massive popularity in the United States.
Oppenheimer used the newfound publicity to organize monthly origami lessons at Manhattan's Japan Society. Twenty-five people attended the first lesson on October 6, many of whom would become members of what she dubbed "the Origami Center", including Temko and Lourie. The lessons soon came into such demand—aided by another mention in Berger's column—that Oppenheimer started additional weekly lessons on Tuesdays and extended their run. She also started a newsletter for the Center called The Origamian. After the Society became unavailable, Oppenheimer held the monthly lessons in a nearby church and weekly lessons in her apartment until they ended in March 1959. Robinson later wrote that, for the first time, origami had its own "centre of activity".
The same day, Lillian and Harry Oppenheimer set out on a world tour. After traveling extensively in Europe, Lillian went to Japan to see Akira Yoshizawa, considered "the preeminent folder of his time". Their meeting attracted journalistic attention and the two appeared on Japanese television. However, Lillian and Harry caught the next flight back to New York City after being informed of her brother's death. When they returned to the Hotel Irving, they found that Lourie had died that morning after falling off the building. Lillian Oppenheimer contributed to the May 1959 origami exhibit at Cooper Union Museum, "Plane Geometry and Fancy Figures". It was the first origami exhibit in the United States. While Yoshizawa's art was the focus, it also featured the work of American folders who had been discovered by Oppenheimer and contained material on the history and mathematical aspects of origami, which helped it gain approval in both artistic and academic circles. The Art of Origami (1961) by Sam Randlett, another important work on the subject, also gave more prominence to Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer's husband died on March 7, 1962. His will dictated that she would receive one third of his estate and the associated income for life through a trust fund. She moved to the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village afterwards.
According to Lister, the Origami Center quickly became the focus of a new school of origami in America which included figures like George Rhoads, James Sakoda, Robert Neale, and Randlett, all of whom were among Oppenheimer's acquaintances. It continued as an informal organization held together by Oppenheimer. According to Robinson, "[to] be Lillian's friend was to automatically be a member." She accumulated a large origami collection and began a business for origami books. Michael Shall and Alice Gray proposed a formal sister organization, and so Oppenheimer, Shall, Gray, and their colleagues established the non-profit The Friends of The Origami Center of America. It was incorporated in 1980 or April 1981. When Gray retired, the Friends were able to continue using her office at the American Museum of Natural History and they slowly subsumed the Center's functions. They purchased Lillian's supplies business in 1987.
Lillian Vorhaus Oppenheimer died on July 24, 1992, at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, following a heart operation. She was survived by her four remaining children—Molly died in 1978—and four stepsons, twenty-six grandchildren and thirty great-grandchildren. The New York Times published an obituary crediting her with introducing Americans to origami, concurred by Robinson in the Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on the subject. According to Robinson, the efforts of Oppenheimer in the United States, Harbin and Legman in Europe and Yoshizawa in Japan turned origami into an organized art form whose practitioners actively communicated.
At the time of Oppenheimer's death, around thirty countries had origami societies, with England's and Israel's being established by her daughter Rosaly. The Origami Center ceased to exist after Oppenheimer died. On July 1, 1994, the Friends were renamed OrigamiUSA. They still have their office at the American Museum of National History. Maintaining many regional branches and ties to origami societies in other countries, OrigamiUSA remains the main origami organization in the United States.
In September 2005, OrigamiUSA proposed making Oppenheimer's birthday on October 24 an origami day before they were reminded that Japan already had an Origami Day on November 11. The organization then proposed recognizing the period between October 24 and November 11 as World Origami Days (WOD). They formed a WOD committee and hold annual events during this period.
During her second marriage, Oppenheimer befriended the puppeteer Shari Lewis, who inspired her to take up amateur ventriloquism and puppetry. Three books were published with the two as co-writers, but Lewis wrote while Oppenheimer merely supplied the models; Giuseppe Baggi also contributed models to Folding Paper Masks. The books helped Oppenheimer gain further publicity for her origami activities. After her husband's death, Oppenheimer held frequent puppetry meetings in her apartment, where she built a puppet theater. She was a founding member of the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York, and active in the Storytelling Center of New York. She sometimes combined her three interests and told stories with origami puppets.