If you love origami as much as I do, wouldn’t it be nice to be gifted with these nice trinkets on December 25th? West Elm currently stocks a wide variety of origami-inspired accessories: Piggy Banks, Ornaments, Pillows and even an origami set! Fun! Fun! Fun!

A graduate of London’s Royal College of Art Tine De Ruysser, Ph.D spends her days investigating production methods and folding patterns with a metal and fabric, a new material she invented while she was a student.

“Banknote Jewellery” is a conceptual and even political piece articulating the relationship between paper money and gold. A timely piece during our world’s financial crisis, Tine explores the symbolism and relationship between the value of paper money and gold.

A symbol of sacred geometry, the Flower of Life is composed of multiple evenly-spaced, overlapping circles, that are arranged so that they form a flower-like pattern with a sixfold symmetry like a hexagon. The center of each circle is on the circumference of six surrounding circles of the same diameter. Because numbers carried symbolic significance in the Old World, geometric shapes became a visual representation of these symbolic numbers and was involved in the planning and construction of many religious structures, including churches and temples. (Read an article written last year regarding Islamic Architecture.) Natural examples of the Flower of Life include: honeycombs, sunflowers and rocks. And lastly, a contemporary example of the Flower of Life can be seen in origami tessellations. Below is a piece by Andrea Russo, titled “Stars in a Sky of Hexagons” – a perfect example of what the Flower of Life is.