Great, you may say, but what the heck is it?
A "Rose of Sharon" design I did in April 2013
Quilling (AKA Paper Filigree, Paper Rolling, and Mosaic - yes, Mosaic) are all names for the same thing - an art in which strips of paper are twirled around the end of a quill pen (hence, the name) and made into either open-ended curls or glued into coils and then shaped and arranged into ornamental patterns. There are those that suggest some version of this art can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, but the more accepted origins are with nuns and monks who were book makers and book illustrators starting around the 13th century. These folks would cut the uneven, hand-made pages of books to be of equal size when the book was complete, leaving them with gilded left-over strips of paper. Being generally poor and ever-resourceful, they came up with this art to recycle these leftover strips into designs and ornaments to sell.
In the 18th and 19th centuries there was a revival of the art amongst "ladies of leisure", (this was not your working class art form,) and a variety of items were commonly embellished with quilling, such as tea caddies, boxes, portrait frames, cabinets, etc.
Quilling migrated to the New World and has fluctuated in interest over the years here in the US. Today we have the North American Quilling Guild/NAQG, (started in 2000,) as well as guilds in England, The Netherlands, Australia and Japan, along with interest groups and blogs all over the Internet. Quilling has more recently had a resurgence in the past decade with scrapbooking and card making, but is still a fairly little-known art form.
Quilling has always appealed to me for a variety of reasons. I was a Medieval Studies minor in college. I'm a research junkie. I love office supplies - I can happily spend hours in such places. It's unusual. It's inexpensive. It's easy. And, basically, it's FUN! I mean, I can't draw to save my life, but I can quill all kinds of things if given enough time, paper and glue, and they come out looking cool. I admit to preferring random designs, but there's a challenge to conquering making an image of something. I love the structures, and the colors, and the whimsy. I love that it's just paper, and if I make a mistake, I can just make more. And I will - stay tuned!
