I just found out about quilling. Pretty intricate stuff.
Quilling is the art of creating decorative designs from thin strips of curled paper. Using simple tools, long strips of paper are tightly wound and released to form complex shapes. Also called paper filigree, it is believed the art has been practiced since ancient Egyptian and/or 4th Century Grecian times.
Although they obviously would not have used paper in the 4th century, it is believed the Greeks used thin metal wires to decorate containers, especially boxes, and Egyptian tombs have been found containing similar wire shapes akin to modern quilling.
During the Renaissance, nuns and monks picked up the art to decorate book covers and the like, only they used gilded paper strips in order to imitate the original metal wires. Later on, the craft spread throughout Europe and the Americas.
The paper is typically cut into strips with widths of approximately 5mm (1/8″). Other common sizes include 1/4″ width and 1/16″ width. A combination of tight winding, loosening, curling, creasing and gluing are used to form the designs. Although the nuns and monks originally used feather quills (hence the name), in modern times people tend to use toothpicks, needles, dowels, or any other stick-like apparatus to wind the paper. There are also slotted tools intended for just such a purpose.
